Ships, Shares and Startups

A primer on economics in space mercantilism.

Introduction

This post discusses a few ideas on how to apply real-world economics to handle low-level space mercantilism and distribution of earnings between PCs and NPCs. The baseline discussion will use the concepts introduced in Stars Without Number Revised book, as well as the supplements Suns of Gold, Skyward Steel and Scavenger Fleets.

The discussed scenario focuses on low-end space merchant groups, ones with relatively small amount of crew where you expect to take big risks and get big rewards. On high-end scale, you’d expect the majority of people employed to have a relatively stable income and fixed payouts for whatever loot they gather. On that scale, refer to Skyward Steel, especially section “Prizes and Captures” on page 19.

If you are looking for some high-crunch mechanics around everything related to space trading and trucking, Traveller's Far Trader might have everything you need and more.

The Problem

Say Gaius and Hixon have earned some money together and managed to buy themselves a ship. They both contributed $500k, bought a ship for $900k and have $100k left over to invest in buying cargo for trading. They agree that they both own half of the ship and are contributing equally to running it, so everything is perfectly balanced. Whatever money they earn, they split 50-50.

Now, let’s say after a while Hixon wants to make a monetary contribution to his academy and wants to cash $10k out to do so. How do you handle this withdrawal from the ship’s funds to keep things fair? You could withdraw $20k and give Gaius $10k to spend on whatever he wants, but maybe he doesn’t have anything he’d want to buy and would rather buy more cargo to turn more profit. Keeping track of that cargo separately would be a problem, so maybe we should find a different solution…

Meanwhile, turns out running the ship with two people isn’t enough. The ship needs another crewmember. They want to hire Magnetar for the standard rate, but she knows working on a dinky little ship is a very risky line of work, as well as that if they score a big score she won’t see any of the extra profits. Now the crew has to figure out how to properly integrate Magnetar into the payout structure so as not to make anyone feel cheated…

And here is where we bust out our computers and engage in a bit of Spreadsheets in Space!

Ship Shares, but different from Traveller

Before we talk about a solution to our problem, let’s briefly touch on similar concepts you might be familiar with.

In the Traveller RPG, your character could earn Ship Shares, which represented 1% ownership of the ship you were on. While an interesting concept, it’s a bit too rigid and doesn’t do enough for our needs.

In Scavenger Fleets you had the concept of Cargo Shares, representing a claim to a certain amount of cargo space on a scavver ship. While an interesting concept in itself, it’s also not what we’re looking for. Cargo Shares are more useful for running small-scale trading on the side of a campaign where the PCs are tied to a specific ship, rather than being more in charge of things like what we are looking for.

In our scenario, Ship Shares would represent a proportional claim to the ship, its cargo and everything associated with it. The number of Shares is not fixed, it can increase and decrease as needed. The value of the Shares is also not fixed not to make them a stand-in for Credits. Ship Shares thus are closer to real-world shares in a company.

Practical example 1 - cashing out

To be able to use the Ship Shares, we have to determine their value. We simply start at some point where we’re liquid - when we have a freshly bought ship, all the credits and no cargo. So in our previous example we have a ship worth $900k and $100k in credits:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$100k
Total:	$1’000k

We decide to create 1000 Ship Shares and divide them equally:

Who?	How many shares do they own?
Gaius	500
Hixon	500
Total:	1’000

So with our simple math, each Ship Share is currently worth $1’000 credits.

Now, if Hixon wants to cash out $10k out of his own pocket, he has to “sell” his Shares. So our adjusted tables look like:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$90k
Total:	$990k

Who?	How many shares do they own?
Gaius	500
Hixon	490
Total:	990

The value of the Shares is preserved, but their number has decreased. Gaius owns the same number of Shares he used to, but he owns proportionally more than Hixon.

Practical example 2 - paying with shares

Now let’s say we want to hire Magnetar. She wants a cut of the future profits, but also wants a salary at the end. We agree to pay hey $10k and 10 Shares at the end of our trip.

Who?	How many shares do they own?
Gaius	500
Hixon	490
Magnetar	10
Total:	1’000

Practical example 3 - round trip

Everyone is ready and we lock things in. Now we’ll be dealing with a lot of cargo and other things, so cashing out will be really hard. We spend our $80k and get some guns, and we’re off with a bit of liquid cash.

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$10k
Guns, 80 tonnes	$80k?
Total:	$990k?

We don’t really know how much those guns will sell for in the end, so we don’t try to keep their value too closely. We have a few adventures, our ship takes a beating, we trade cargo a few times, and our spreadsheet looks like a bit of a mess:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship, damaged	<$900k? $700k maybe?
Cash	$1k - we’re kind of illiquid
Cats? Why do we have cats? 1 tonne	???
Roses, 30 tonnes	???
Computers, 10 tonnes	???
Total:	Heck if I know...

At this point, if someone wanted to cash out, we couldn’t give them a fair payment since we don’t know what anything is worth. We could try negotiating what would be a fair cat-to-share payout, but let’s keep things simple and assume you can only cash out when everything is liquidated. So at the end of our journey, we cash out our cargo. Now it’s time to cover our costs:

Item	Net amount
Cash balance, starting	$1k
Cats	+$70k
Roses	+$40k
Computers	+$300k
Refuelling fees	-$1k
Ship repair	-$100k
Magnetar’s Salary	-$10k
Final balance	$300k

Okay, our final cash balance ended up being $300k! We turned a profit! Time to update our sheets:

What is it?	How much is it worth?
Ship	$900k
Cash	$300k
Total:	$1’200k

Our final total balance is $1.2M, so we’re up 20% from our starting point. Not bad! We still have 1’000 Ship Shares, but now each of them is worth $1’200! This means Gaius has earned $100k ($500k investment, current shares worth of $600k), Hixon has earned $98k due to cashing out early, and Magnetar has earned $10k in salary and $12k in Ship Shares! Not bad!

Share salaries and investments

There are a few more concepts you should keep in mind when using this system. First, if you intend on paying the ship crewmembers a regular salary in Ship Shares, you shouldn’t forget to pay the important people on the ship as well. In our example, if Gaius and Hixon would keep paying Magnetar 10 Ship Shares per each trip and she wouldn’t cash any of them out, in 50 missions she would own one third of the ship. It might not be the ideal solution to go for.

Instead, you could pay each member of the crew a certain salary in Ship Shares. Say, everyone would be paid 20 Ship Shares, and they could take a smaller amount of Shares in exchange for a fixed salary. This way the final ownership would tend to represent how much everyone contributed to the ship over the whole campaign, etc. You could increase and shrink your crew easily without worrying about the regular crew being edged out completely.

Similarly, you could also allow people to “invest” in the Ship by purchasing Shares with their own money. If you’d invest in the Ship as a whole, you’d put the money in the pile and get new shares proportional to how much you contributed (in our example, investing $60k at $1’200k per share would net you 50 Shares). If you want to purchase someone else’s Shares, they’d get the money and you’d get their Shares - the Ship wouldn’t see the money.

Finally, if you want to kick someone out of the crew in a fair way, you could force-liquidate their Ship Shares at a fair market value (if Magnetar decided to leave, Gaius and Hixon could force pay her $12k from the Ship to buy back her 10 Ship Shares). This could be useful if you don’t want people that aren’t on the ship to be still eating into your future profits. On the other hand, if you’re strapped for cash, you might want to hold off on that…

Everything else

Now that you are basically running your spaceship like a startup, you can open the game up to a whole world of fun stuff you can find in the real world. Angel Investors that invest in new ships to earn a fair bit of money. Doing Seed Rounds to sell Ship Shares and raise money for future endeavours. Multiplying or dividing the number of shares to keep their value within a certain range (say, if 1 Share becomes worth $100k, you can multiply all Share balances by 100 to make the new Share be worth $1k again). Being straddled with debt for owning some Shares that went belly up, or perhaps re-inventing Limited Liability Company. Etc. Etc.

Your only limit is how much do you want to play Spreadsheets in Space, and how many Space Lawyers do you want to include ;).

Useful links

• Stars Without Number, Revised Edition, Free Version
• Suns of Gold
• Skyward Steel
• Scavenger Fleets
• Traveller
• Far Trader
• Actual Play - Stars Without Number, Blackstar (our mercantile SWN campaign)
• SWN XP & Money Table (useful spreadsheet from our game)

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...

When does PVP work in RPGs?

Player vs player conflicts can be an important aspect of role playing games. They can be an epic end of a story, or just as likely be the breaking point at which the game ends without a satisfying conclusion to the main adventure. Despite being an important aspect of the medium, there doesn't appear to be too much word count devoted to this aspect in any of the game manuals. So lets discuss this topic and see what insight we could find today.

What is PVP?

In broad sense, PVP is a conflict between two characters in an RPG controlled by the players. In theory this could mean any sort of conflict. You could have the characters competing financially in an EVE-esque market PVP. You could have two characters trying to accomplish the same goal, or get the same prize and thus competing with one another. Or you could even have some friendly rivalry of who can kill the most enemies and thus be "the better fighter".

Of course, most often when talking about PVP we are talking about two characters facing one another in a physical combat where only one of them will live by the end of the day. Two men enter, one man leaves.

The problems with PVP

There are many problems surrounding PVP, and many ways it can be done wrong unfortunately.

Probably the worst thing you could have in PVP is using it as means of spiting another player, or settling some out-of-game grudges. There is really no way this can end up with anything other than more grudges. Often you also end up dragging more people into your disagreement, either forcing them to take side or at best being awkward spectators in a conflict they don't want to be part of. These sort of things should be settled outside of the game really - you are solving nothing by making it into PVP...

Similarly, PVP might not work if used as a means of eliminating a character the group doesn't like. More often than not this is just a way of telling the player they made "a shitty character", which could be just as easily done out of the game. If the player feels they've been wronged by their character death, they can just as easily make another character that will still be grating to the group, making the conflict ultimately meaningless.

Next up would be using PVP as a method of bullying. You might not have anything against other players per-se, but you still would like their characters' stuff, or the freshly acquired loot. And since might makes right, you would flex your muscles to get what you want. This again creates more resentment at the table more often than not, and at best you might get some catharsis after the group gangs up on the bully character and murder them. Overall, not that great.

Another reason why PVP might not work, is that you'd often be able to tell who would win a given PVP engagement before it even begins. It's not fun seeing a peace loving monk going against a two meter gorilla of a fighter.

On a similar note, who wins a given PVP engagement could be dictated or at least heavily influenced by how the conflict is structured. An assassin would win if they had the chance to perform some sneak attacks, a warrior would do better in an open conflict, while a werewolf might need full moon to rip their enemy to shreds. Alternatively if you can call what way the conflict is resolved - pistols at dawn, mental competition, a debate, a duel, etc., you can achieve the same result - skewing the fight in your favour. As such, whoever can control when and how the PVP takes place can almost assure their own victory.

Lastly, PVP doesn't work if it doesn't have a meaningful point to it. If someone wants to just retire their character and they just want to get them killed by betraying the party, that's just lazy and contrived. Just skip PVP and get to the point you want to get to.

When PVP does work

Even despite the bad rep it gets at times, PVP can still be used as a good storytelling tool.

The easiest scenario where PVP works is when all of the participating players want to engage in it. It's that simple. If two players want to role play some rivals that will battle one another on regular basis until one of them will drop dead eventually (and the rest of the party doesn't mind this potential sideline to the adventure!), that's great! If some player talks to their fellow players and says they want to cross the party so much they will kill the character, that's also fine. Any scenario everyone is on board with for PVP is a good enough reason to incorporate it into the story.

Second kind of scenario would be a game that sets out to have PVP from the start. Say you want to play a group of backstabbing vampires in Requiem - that's fine. As long as everyone knows PVP is on the table, what are the rules for engagement and everyone is fine with those from the get-go, that's fair game. This way everyone is prepared for the conflict that will happen.

So in general, as long as all participants (and spectators!) of a PVP conflict know the rules of engagement, the consequences of the fight and are on board with the idea, PVP can work. It's all about agreeing to the sort of game you want to play - you don't want to think you're playing a friendly game where everyone gets along only to find out down the line that someone is about to murder your character unexpectedly. It ruins the fun.

How to PVP and make it interesting

Now that we know we'll be having PVP, it's perhaps time to ask ourselves how to keep PVP interesting. On one hand it might be interesting to have a game where anyone can attack at any moment, on the other hand roleplaying a paranoid prepper that doesn't trust anyone ever can be very taxing.

So first rule of engagement is having to make PVP fair to the players. If you have open season for PVP, you don't want any player to be getting an unfair advantage. Keep in mind the word "player" - it's more important to be fair to the players than to the characters, although one often goes along with the other. If one player can scheme and get some sneaky advantage, either the other player should also be able to get that, or have some equivalent mechanic they can use. Say, have some mechanic in play for facilitating characters' downtime activities. Different characters might need different things to have an advantage in a conflict - a warrior might be ready to go at any time, while an assassin might need a way to sneak up on their opponent, while some manipulating mob boss might need a way to send their goons to do their dirty work.

If having an open PVP season is too much, you might want to add some structure to the PVP. Perhaps you might only allow fair duels, or only engage in a given place or time.

You could also have the GM or even other players be the arbiters of how a given PVP might be structured. Say the group agrees that whenever a duel would be declared, the players that don't participate in the conflict would be able to discuss how and when the actual conflict would take place. This could mean they would be able to choose a fair way for two characters to fight one another, or even introduce a dynamic in which the players can play favourites. Maybe some favours would have to be traded for one character to get an upper hand in defeating their rival, or maybe the group would use this opportunity to get rid of the most problematic character in an underhanded way. Of course, not everyone might be interested in a game of politics and favours...

Alternatively, the players might have to come to an agreement as to how the PVP should be structured. They might have to negotiate what sort of handicaps to put in place, how to level the playing field and so on. This could be a self-balancing game - a strong warrior might have to give a large handicap to a weaker oponent until they would agree to the conflict. Perhaps one could even negotiate a number of surprise advantages the other character could spring on them in the duel they wouldn't have time to prepare for.

Conclusions

There are many ways PVP can be done poorly in an RPG, and a few ways it can actually be done well. The main problem is keeping it balanced and getting players on board with the idea of engaging in PVP in the first palce.

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.