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.

Player agency over dice randomness

As I explained last time, I'm a mechanically-focused gamer. I enjoy engaging with various game systems to figure out in what ways they work, and in what ways they don't. Last time I covered the difference rolling two dice instead of one can have on game feel, and this time I would like to talk about how a few systems handle player agency over dice randomness. By that I mean various mechanics and resources the players can use to influence their dice rolls, especially the important ones.

The problem - roll and pray

At least once every session a player will come across a situation that is very important to them - perhaps they are down to one last hit point and need to kill the enemy before they themselves are killed, or the character is preparing for a hack that is a culmination of the adventure and their paycheck depends on it. Those dramatic moments where the players wish there was anything they could do to improve the odds, but alas - they can only roll and pray.

I really don't like such situations of being powerless and not having some mechanic one can leverage to improve those odds. Luckily, there are a number of options that various systems have implemented.

Rerolls

The simplest approach to addressing the issue is letting the players have a reroll handy. Those often are a resource shared either between the party or given to the characters individually. Stars Without Number has an Expert class that can reroll one non-combat roll each scene, Savage Worlds gives players a few Bennys per session they can use as a reroll, Godbound has a Word of Luck that is all about manipulating rolls and causing rerolls in various ways.

In general, rerolls are a good option when the characters are somewhat competent at a task and should be able to normally succeed at it. It's a bit less useful when the character is trying to tackle something they are woefully unprepared for - if it's unlikely they will succeed, they will likely still fail with a reroll.

Improving the odds

Another approach that can be taken is improving the odds of the roll before it is made. Chronicles of Darkness gives you more dice to roll if you have the proper gear, and you can further improve your odds by spending Willpower - a limited, refreshable resource. The system also features a number of ways to fudge the dice math to imrove the chance of an exceptional success by using 9-again or 8-again rules. Star Trek Adventures makes you accrue Momentum by performing tasks you're good as so you can buy more dice for a roll when it's really needed. CoD, STA and Stars Without Number give the option of other characters assisting the primary character performing a roll - usually a success by the assistant gives a small boon to the primary roll.

Overall, improving the odds can be especially useful when the character isn't as competent - even a small boon to an unskilled character usually translates to much better odds than adding a simple reroll. They also usually are simpler to justify narratively - you have a clear explanation of why you're getting that +2 to the roll.

Success, but at a cost

Success in a role playing game is often seen as binary - you either succeed, or you don't. Maybe you also have a botch or an exceptional success, but either way - the line is drawn hard. However, there are a few systems where there is a gradient to the failure.

In The Veil (or Powered by the Apocalypse in general), you almost always have two or three gradients of a success. You can outright fail, succeed completely, or in the middle - succeed at a cost. Perhaps you don't get everything you wanted, or there is some complication that occurred as a result of your actions. Star Trek Adventures gives players an option to Succeed At a Cost instead of accepting a failed loss. This allows the task to be successful, but some complication will arise as a result of that roll.

This option is useful for fudging the numbers a little - if the player is just slightly off from succeeding. It's always useful to have it as an option to allow the player to decide whether their task is important enough to warrant the extra cost.

Controlled botches

Somewhat related to the previous section, although distinct enough to warrant its own. In a lot of games you will find rules for botching a roll - failing so badly it's causing some trouble. World of Darkness up to Chronicles of Darkness had a rule where rolling 1s meant subtracting from successes and causing botches if their amount got too big for example. While fun in their own right at times, it's perhaps best when this option is left to the player - letting them decide when they want to be discovered, mislead and so on to create a more interesting game.

Chronicles of Darkness is perhaps a good example of how to give players agency over their botches. When a roll is a failure, the player can opt to make it a dramatic failure to get a beat (a point of XP basically). Outside of attempting a roll with only a chance die, this is the only way to botch in the system, giving the players agency over when it occurs, and rewarding them for allowing it to happen (hopefully giving the GM a chance to make the game more interesting as a result).

Trumping the roll

Some games allow the characters to outright trump the roll with some usually high-end powers or skills. Stars Without Number have some Psychic and True AI powers that roll back an entire turn or a single roll, or go as far as dictating an entire turn and all of its rolls completely (max level True AI power). The same system also features a Warrior class that can auto-succeed at one combat roll per scene, or negate an incoming attack completely. Godbound has one Gift that once per character's entire life they can succeed at any undertaking, albeit only at a basic level.

Those powers are neat, but they need to be carefully balanced not to throw the entire game off balance.

Conclusions

There are many ways RPG systems have figured out how to allow the players to influence their rolls. It's good to have at least once option available to the players, and multiple of these examples can be used simultaneously without feeling like they're overlapping too much.

Scifi media as a blueprint for scifi elements in your game

Recently, my group started playing a game of Stars Without Number. The setting of that game is very light on the backstory and the sector you play in will be a giant sandbox you fill in yourself. The game is very conducive to a lot of scifi - you could play it as Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Cowboy Bebop, Altered Carbon, Fading Suns, etc. What you decide to fill your sector with is up to you.

This gives the GM and the players a lot of flexibility as to how to create the setting. The vanilla Stars Without Number assumes present history happened, humanity built its own FLT ships in the near future, expanded outwards into the far reaches of space, everything collapsed 600 years ago due to The Scream, and now the worlds are connecting up again. This means you can get very varied levels of technology, very varied types of societies, and very specific feels for each solar system.

Swan Song for example decided to build a few planets and organisations around the current or past cultures of Earth. You had the Sunbeam Multistellar megacorporation that was heavily steeped in cowboy culture and mannerisms. The Hoveydan Caliphate was influenced by the cultures of the middle east. Sigrid is viking and Norse through and through.

In our game of Blackstar, we stumbled upon our gimmick for the sector by chance.

Scifi as a blueprint

So here's the idea - in the modern world, a lot of things are influenced by what came before. Scifi has inspired modern technology, the US government was built on the ideas of a classical Greek ideas and the Roman Republic, and even a lot of our fiction draws from the history - talking about emperors, feudal societies, pirates, etc. A lot of things are built on top of blueprints that came before.

So the core conceit for our game is that since the modern history we live in today did happen in the Stars Without Number universe, it's quite possible a lot of modern books, novels, films, or culture in general was passed down over generations, being remixed and remade over and over. Because of that, those stories have become ingrained into the society - you can reference the Alien movie and describe something as a xenomorph just as casually as you can reference the Odyssey and call something a siren or a cyclops.

With the scifi proliferation that exists in the universe, it would then be natural for people and societies to build things based on those concepts. A xenomorph is not only a creature of legends, but a blueprint for a gene engineered killer machine. Starship Troopers is a series of stories from a past, but also an idea on which to build a society. Lightsabres are mythical weapons, but they have also been made real with futuristic technology.

In other words - the scifi contemporary to us the players formed a set of blueprints for the game setting to build around. While the events of that scifi didn't happen (you did not have the God Emperor of Mankind undertake the Great Crusade against the xenos), but the ideas from them did influence the development of the future timeline, and they did inspire various entities to turn some of those ideas into reality with the future tech.

Heck, even Stars Without Number's supplement Suns of Gold refers to space merchants that rule over primitive societies with their future tech as a "kurtzer" in reference to Kurtz from Heart of Darkness. Kurtz went from being a character in a 1899 novella to a template of behaviour that is recognised in the universe of the game in year 3200.

Because of this you could have things like one of the PCs, as a True AI in a Synth shell, looking like Roy Batty, a replicant from Bladerunner. Obviously, whoever designed that shell took inspiration from the old fiction and based the shell on the designs from ancient Earth. Or you could have predators from the Predator franchise appearing as a society - some gene engineer obviously modified some rich big game hunter and gave them powerful weapons so they could go across the galaxy and hunt the most dangerous prey.

This sort of approach to filling a scifi universe gives the GM and the players an excuse to draw from any number of sources without having to reconcile why you would suddenly have stormtroopers shooting xenomorphs - neither of those franchises did happen, but the ideas from those works of fiction did take place. If Picard can quote Shakespeare, he should also be able to quote Star Wars after all ;).

Conclusions

In a sandbox scifi game that branches off our real world timeline like Stars Without Number, it's not unreasonable to use modern scifi as a blueprint for elements that can be found in the game. With sufficiently advanced technology, it would be possible to copy ideas and concept from such works of fiction and make them real in the game's world. This would allow the GM and the players to build on top of such scifi and take elements from them as needed without worrying about keeping the world consistent with those works of fiction.

The Doylist choices in role play games

In the culmination of a recent game of Stars Without Number an interesting trope sneaked up on us. We were fighting the cartoonish villain Thanatosis and her Hungry Boys in a Mad Max style dust thunderstorm. (episode end spoiler alert) After having her tank blown open and surviving a sniper rifle shot to the back of her head, she decided to retreat away from battle and ride away into the dust storm cursing the name of one of the PCs.

Our characters could've pursued her and put her down without too much trouble, and at least one PC did want to do that, but as players we decided to let her go. On one hand, it was because our characters had other things to attend to, on the other hand, it made more sense from the narrative perspective to have her as a new nemesis that may one day return to fight our characters.

Thinking and talking it over later, that's how I stumbled upon the "Watsonian vs. Doylist" trope.

Watsonian vs. Doylist trope

The Watsonian vs. Doylist trope related to the dichotomy between the character in a story and the author of that story, or in RPG space - the player character and the player. It refers to Sherlock Holmes and two types of commentary you could have on the events of the book - the perspective of the in-universe Dr. Watson, explaining things as he understands them, or from the out-of-universe perspective of the book's author, Arthur Conan Doyle, explaining things as the author of the book.

An example of this trope is trying to answer the question of "why are there so many human-like aliens in Star Trek?" Watsonian answer is that an ancient humanoid race seeded the galaxy with all of those aliens. The Doylist answer is that making human-like aliens is cheaper for the show and allows the audience to understand the characters easier. Both sides answer the same question in a relevant manner, but give incompatibly different reasonings.

The Watsonian choices

In terms of role play games, we often focus on playing our characters in a Watsonian way - we are very attached to our character, want to play them "optimally" and make sure we don't leave any hanging threads the GM could try to weaponize against us later. This is basic human nature - we are very loss-averse, and since we associate our characters as being a representations of us, we don't want to see them die.

This is a fine approach to take, but at the same time, it makes the characters act too neatly and perfectly. They don't make too many mistakes, they don't act impulsively against their better judgement, etc.

One approach I've seen this issue addressed was the Limit Break mechanic in Exalted. This is a mechanic that helps the characters act like the classical tragic hero of myth they are meant to emulate. Basically, the characters accumulate emotional baggage over time until they snap and take the self-destructive course of action - they might blindly charge into battle to their possible death, lash out at their allies straining that relationship, or may be frozen with indecision at the climax of a conflict.

The Doylist choices

On the other end of the spectrum, we would have the idea of playing the character in a Doylist way - making decisions that tell the better story, but may go against what's best for the character in question. This would mean letting some antagonists live so they may become a nemesis for the character, or deciding to go on a drunken bender and break the law so the player could be cased with the challenge of escaping the police or having to cover something up.

A good example of taking the Doylist choice comes from Roll Play Swan Song, an actual play game of Stars Without Number. (spoiler alert for Week 1 and a game-long side-plot) In the first session of the game, one of the PCs, Higgins, ran into an old contact, Randy, that helped them get off the planet with an unknown parcel for their mission. In exchange, Randy wanted to get a ride off the planet - easy enough, basically a free favour. However, Higgins' player decided it would be more interesting to betray Randy at the last moment, shooting him in the head on the landing pad, in order "not to leave any lose threads".

Because of that action, the character has antagonised a criminal to whom Randy owed some money. This would later mean they would have a bounty hunter come after their heads. When the players would return to the planet later to help save some civilians, Higgins would be recognised by the military, making him have to flee and possibly leaving a lot of people to die. In the final episode of the game, Randy would also make a return with a cybernetically fixed head only to snipe Higgins dead as a revenge (luckily, Piani was there to psi-heal his exploded head back up).

All of this happened because the player decided to take the Doylist choice (the player even confirmed the choice was deliberately made to make the game more interesting). The game and the podcast were better for it, even if the character had to suffer because of it.

I think I saw the Doylist approach in the actual game books only twice. Chronicles of Darkness give the player the choice when their characters botch their rolls in exchange for XP.

The only diegetic example of this approach could perhaps be found in Exalted: The Fair Folk. In the world of Exalted, there exist entities known as Rakshasa, The Fair Folk. They are being made out of the primordial chaos from outside of the world that assume humanoid shapes to weave narratives to strengthen themselves. Essentially, they act out stories and conflict like actors (meaning playing Rakshasa is the player playing a character playing a character). Rakshasa become more powerful the more connections they have, meaning they seek to cultivate a web of nemesis, rivals, lovers, underlings and so on. This means for them the Watsonian and Doylist choices are one and the same - the players want to make mistakes because their characters want to make mistakes because that creates a more compelling narrative for them.

But let's reel this back a bit from this crazy meta-example ;).

An agreement between the player and the GM

Obviously, making the Doylist choice in a game leaves the PC and thus the player more exposed to the GM and their narrative. It would therefore be good to discuss this topic ahead of time and develop a mutual understanding between the players and the GM. The GMs shouldn't take those vulnerabilities and possible nemesis and just use them to screw over the player willy-nilly. Just as the player made a wink to the GM while letting that villain go, so should the GM at some point in the future wink back to the player.

If you want to quantify this relationship in some sense, perhaps each time the player makes such conscious Doylist choice, they would get some point or token. In exchange, the GM would get to keep that plot thread or character that would later come back "to take revenge" on that character (in a more narrative sense, there may be no actual killing involved). However, the player could cash those tokens in at any time to get something significant they want. It could be that they would escape being killed in some situation, or be able to get some artefact that would normally be out of their reach, or the like. It would have to be something significant enough to make the Doylist choice worth it, although not as significant as to make it some sort of wish-granting engine ( ;) ). You'd be basically cashing in "I'm not doing the adventure that would've enabled me to get this thing" in exchange for an "IOU of an adventure surrounding this plot at some point in the future".

If the GM brings back that same villain back and they are out for revenge, or the situation bites the players in the ass because of their past mistake, the debt is settled. If that character or plot would come back later again, it shouldn't be any more dangerous than any other adventure would be - you don't necessarily want to have to deal with some crazy person plotting to murder you every other session just because you let them live once.

On the other hand, if the player's overcome the obstacle and they get the upper hand, there is nothing stopping the player from taking another Doylist choice, earning another token and letting the GM keep the villain once more.

Also worth noting is that the "revenge" part of the deal can come in at any point really - if the GM wants the villain to try shooting the PC in the back right after they have been spared by the player, that's fine. If it worked for Dragonball (Goku sparing Frieza only to be shot in the back), it can work for your game too ;).

Conclusions

Players are often inclined to make Watsonian choices to do what's best for their characters and avoid leaving any lose threats least they be used against them. However, sometimes making a Doylist choice would make the story and the character more interesting.

It's good for the GM and the players to discuss this topic and come to some mutual understanding of how they would want to use this approach in their games. The players would be more encouraged to make Doylist choices if they knew the GM would handle that in a responsible manner.

Character competency, game feel and dice randomness

In the recent years I've explored a number of systems with my group. We've played some games with Godbound, Chronicles of Darkness, Powered by the Apocalypse and Star Trek Adventures systems. I'm a very system-focused player, so I enjoy exploring how the different systems play and what's their "game feel" like. Most importantly, I was really keen on exploring the most core mechanic of almost every role playing game - the dice mechanics.

Character competency

Whenever I would start playing a new system, I would inevitably ask myself - "does this roll as well as World of Darkness"? Vampire the Masquerade has been the first system I've played extensively and say what you will about how clunky it might be at times, the dice rolls in that game felt great. You always rolled a nice handful of dice (but not a crazy amount like Exalted or Shadowrun!), and you felt like your character was competent - it wasn't hard to roll a success, and you could rely on your character performing their specialities more often than not.

To contrast that, we've played about a year worth of Godbound between our Exalted game, Ancalia game, and doing one-shots. The system used a single d20 roll extensively, keeping with its OSR roots. Despite the system being geared towards feeling epic and grand, whenever a roll was required the characters didn't feel nearly as competent. It wasn't that uncommon to get a streak of low-value results and fail entirely, despite playing demigods.

I've been trying to figure out why those systems felt so different, and I think I figured something interesting out...

Binomial vs linear distribution

Two basic, simplified math concepts. Binomial distribution is a randomness distribution that looks like a bell-curve. It's similar to a normal distribution, but there are only a finite amount of values it can take. You can get extreme results from either end, but you're a lot more likely to land somewhere in the middle. 2D6 roll has a binomial distribution - you're most likely to end up with a 7, but 2 or 12 also happen on occasion. Linear distribution means you're as likely to get any one result as another one. 1D6 has a linear distribution - you're as likely to roll a 1, a 6 or a 3.

A useful spreadsheet to reference.

My guess is the difference in game feel between Chronicles of Darkness (the modern, updated version of World of Darkness, here is our game) and Godbound lies in the way dice rolling is handled. In CoD, the more skilled you are, the more dice you roll. Each dice landing on a 8, 9 or 10 is a success, 5 or more successes is an exceptional success. You often roll 5 or more dice. In Godbound, you always roll a single D20, add some modifiers and you have to roll above some threshold - 20 for example.

CoD feels good because you can rely on your dice rolls thanks to the binomial distribution - you know you're very likely to roll at least one success - having just two dice (a very paltry amount) you're already more likely to succeed than fail, 4 dice gives you 75%, 6 is over 88%, and 9 gives you 95%. Godbound feels worse due to the linear nature of its rolls - rolling a 1 is as likely as rolling a 10 or 20. You have to get +10 to reach 50% success rate, +15 gives you 75%, +18 gives you 90%, and you only get 95% at +19.

Why are those percentages important? Because that's basically halving the chance of failure - a half (0.5), a half again (0.25), and again (0.125) and again (0.0625).

Progression between 2, 4, 6 and 9 is a fairly linear one in CoD (the previous editions were a bit harder), while in Godbound you start somewhere in the middle of the progression and polishing up to the final few points is a challenge.

So subjectively at least, it seems having a binomial distribution in your game is the key to having a good game feel. Now, the question is, how many dice do you really need to pull this off?

Many dice, or just two?

I've played with two systems that tackle the binomial distribution in fundamentally different ways. First one is the already mentioned Chronicles of Darkness line of games. The other is Stars Without Number (it has a free edition, do check it out!, and here is our game), a game by the same author as Godbound.

In SWN, a skill roll is just a simple 2D6 roll, modified by your skill rating. So it's the simplest binomial distribution you can really get. The skills just shift the result. You usually have to get 7 or better to succeed at a basic task, 10 at something more complicated, or 12 at something very complicated.

How does this simple roll compare to rolling something like 10D10s in CoD? Well, looking at our handy spreadsheet, pretty favourably all things considered! Rolling 2D6 gives you a simple binomial distribution, and while rolling more D10s not only shifts the curve but also changes its shape a bit, it might not be enough to affect the game honestly (a binomial distribution that is thinner means results are very likely to end up near the centre, while a wider one as we see rolling a lot of D10s means there is a spread in the ranges - you're less likely to end up on the dead centre).

Both systems behave similarly - the higher your skill in SWN or the more dice you roll in CoD, your probability shifts upwards, meaning you're more likely to reliably land a success.

Honestly, as someone that was very much in love with CoD dice mechanics, it's surprising to see that rolling 2D6 is a fairly good substitute for having a handful of D10s.

Conclusions

It appears a binomial distribution from rolling two or more dice instead of one makes games feel a lot more satisfying and gives characters a degree of competency - the players can rely on their characters succeeding at a given task they're specialising in. It seems that you don't really need a lot of dice to achieve this either - rolling 2D6 and shifting the result accordingly might be enough to achieve this game feel. Rolling a single dice is generally the worst due to the linear nature of the probability distribution.

Other resources:

• Dice System Ease, Speed, and Probability Distribution in RPGs

How Chronicles of Darkness almost fixed minmaxing

The various World of Darkness games have a long history in the RPG community. The games have been around since 1991 and always had a strong following - not competing directly with D&D, but instead going for a more modern gothic horror settings with various staples of modern horror movies - Vampires, Werewolves, Mages and so on. Also for a long while they were pretty much a heaven for minmaxing. The most recent edition (Chronicles of Darkness) however, managed to largely solve this issue.

World of Darkness and minmaxing

World of Darkness (the old games, Vampire the Masquarade, etc.) had a very appealing character building and progression system. It was essentially a point buy system - you would have a budget of dots to spend on given categories and you could make your character within those boundaries however you liked. So if you had 7 dots to spend on your Physical Attributes, you could max out Strength and get your Stamina very high, but you would have very low Dexterity. Having 13 dots to distribute in your Knowledge Abilities you could be a PHD in Science and world's greatest surgeon at the same time, but you might know nothing about Law, Occult or Computers. You could also make yourself a generalist, having some basic knowledge across all fields but specialising in nothing.

You also had a few freebie points to spend at the end of the character generation, either taking Merits, or buying up more points in Attributes, Abilities and Advantages. If you really wanted to be the world's greatest hacker, surgeon, lawyer and politician in the same combination, you could invest in those dots.

The system was pretty straightforward and elegant - you didn't have any random rolls during character creation, you started off roughly at peak mortal level of competency and you could make your character however you wanted...

Unfortunately, there were ways to build a character optimally, and I'm not talking about "let's build a murderer so he survives longer".

See, after the character is created, you start earning XP. You don't level in this game, but instead can spend those XPs directly to raise your stats. So you can go from Strength 3, to Strength 4 to 5, etc. Again - very elegant approach, much more organic than hitting level milestones and so on. You're constantly improving yourself.

The main crux is that the higher the stat, the more it costs. Attributes cost current rating x4, so Strength 1->2 costs 4XP, while Strength 4->5 costs 16XP. Abilities cost current rating x2, Disciplines cost x5 or x7.

In other words, if you only focus on starting the game with a few very high stats you will be possibly hundred or more XP worth of dots ahead of a character that is an all-rounder. And this is a game where getting 5XP or more in a session is somewhat rare.

This pretty much meant a lot of characters were hyper-specialised early on and comedically incompetent in other areas. Not necessarily the best choice for a game more focused on more grounded narrative.

Chronicles of Darkness and minmaxing

World of Darkness came and went with its Time of Judgement. After a decade of a metaplot, the series got a reboot in a much less metanarrative-heavy setting called at the time the New World of Darkness. The new line of books focused on being more streamlined, chipping away some stranger bits and keeping the core more focused. Overall, it was a very good reboot, and the mechanics also got a small update.

For our discussion - the freebie points were gone, so you no longer had as wide of an option to push the minmaxing limits, and now the cost of the last dot of any given stat cost you double to further curb minmaxing. However, the old problem still persisted - generalists were punished, while specialised characters still got way ahead.

In comes Chronicles of Darkness, the second edition of nWoD. Not as large of a reboot as last time, but it was still a redesign of a few core mechanical concepts of the game. Something you didn't know you wanted until you got it. Once again, more streamlining and this time - the problem of minmaxing was almost solved.

You once again built your character a dot at a time, this time with no extra cost for the last dot. No freebie points, just a normal distribution of dots. Then, when you get into the game, you notice that one big difference - all of the XP costs are flat. Strength 1->2 costs 4XP, Strength 4->5 also costs 4XP. The costs are flat across the board. Since you didn't get any freebie points, every character has the same amount of dots in the various categories. This means the system is finally fair and even no matter what you do, right?

Well, there is a new, small problem - Beats.

Beats, Botches, Conditions and minmaxing

Beats are a really cool concept, certainly a welcome addition Chronicles of Darkness has introduced. Basically, each time the character fulfils an aspiration, or get into a really big fight, etc. they get a beat. You get five beats, you get one XP. Simple and fun.

Since you don't have to spend as much XP to push your stats to that final level, you get a lot less XP per session - one full XP is a generally good session, as opposed to about 4XP in the previous edition.

You get beats for a lot of activities - fulfilling your goals, getting beaten up, at the end of a session, etc. However, you also get them for taking "a dramatic failure" (a botch), or when a condition is resolved. Those two relate directly to dice rolling.

Another change Chronicles of Darkness introduced was that players had control over when they botch and not. The players don't just getting a bad roll and botch straight away (minus chance rolls, but those are infrequent). Instead, whenever the character fails a roll, the player can opt to turn that failure into a dramatic failure and get a beat that way. This gives the players a nice agency of when they really don't want to screw up badly and when they can risk it.Very neat.

On the opposite end, when a player rolls very well. When they roll an exceptional success, they get a condition - basically a short-term advantage they can use. Often, the players will get an Inspired Condition, which they can spend to make a roll turn into an Exceptional Success easier. That counts as resolving that condition, which means they get a beat. From our play, this also often ends up triggering the exceptional success and chaining into another Inspired Condition, giving players a perpetual way of generating beats.

Now, there is a small limit - you can only get a beat from any given source once per scene, so you can't just botch 5 times over and get an XP. You can, however, botch 5 times in 5 different scenes and get that.

So how is this minmaxing? Well, whether your roll fails or gets an exceptional success is heavily dependant on how many dice the character has in the given roll. If they have very few dice, corresponding to low dot amounts, they will fail more often, giving them a chance to take a dramatic failure more often. If they have a lot of dice in a roll, they are more likely to achieve an exceptional success, take the Inspired condition, resolve it on a similar roll, get another exceptional success and keep chaining it.

At either extreme, you get more opportunities to get more beats, therefore advance more. If you're average, you will often succeed, but not enough to trigger an exceptional success. So a minmaxed character will be able to both roll very poorly and very well, while a generalist will be stuck at being mediocre and neither getting the dramatic failure and a beat, nor the exceptional success and the condition resulting in a beat.

Overall, it's not really that bad in-game - you will usually have a way of getting beats one way or another, and introducing group beats means you don't feel like you fall behind other players. It's definitely an improvement over the previous editions!

Conclusions

World of Darkness and New World of Darkness gave a high XP-equivalent advantage to minmaxing characters as opposed to ones that spread their dots around. New World of Darkness curbed that a bit, but it wasn't until Chronicles of Darkness where that problem was largely solved. However, the last edition introduced new ways of gaining more XP that favour minmaxed characters. CoD is still a notable improvement over the previous editions, however.