Update to #Wyrdish, my rules-light, Destiny-inspired, sci-fantasy PbtA hack about immortal wyrdens that can be run…

16 thoughts on “Update to #Wyrdish, my rules-light, Destiny-inspired, sci-fantasy PbtA hack about immortal wyrdens that can be run…”

1. Just rapidly skimmed through it, and there’s some really great stuff here that jumps out! I love that “based on” list, and your section on bonds and death is very evocative. The videogamey “reforging” sounds like it would be very fun in actual play.

2. Sweet! Need to follow along on the development of this one.

3. Adam D Thank you! Yeah, I wanted to wear my inspirations on my sleeve with this one, because the creators of those works really deserve so much credit for their wonderful ideas.

   I’m a huge gamer, and one of my favorite recent trends in gaming is how the mechanic of dying and respawning is getting worked into the narrative and the setting (Destiny, Borderlands, Bloodborne/Dark Souls, Shadow of Mordor). It takes something the players are already doing and gives it a unifying reason to be there.

   So I wanted to see how that would play out here. Players are either dying and making new characters, or maxing out their level and then making new characters, so what if we made those a part of the game and wrote some rules about it? That is my goal here.

4. Hell’s bells, now you got me thinking if this can be hacked for Warframe (my current video gaming passion.) 😀

5. Todd Zircher Oh man, don’t get me started on Warframe. That game is amazing.

   Maybe? If I had to simmer Warframe down to one word I’d say it’s about “momentum,” and I’m not sure how you’d evoke momentum in a tabletop game like this. With cards, perhaps, and operations built on speed?

   But yeah, you could definitely pull off a sci-fi hack of a system where players are cool badasses with powers in a sci-pocalypse. That’s really all Wyrdish is, anyway. You’d be adding a lot of elements that aren’t really addressed in Warframe (negotiation, social hierarchies, talking), and maybe toning down what is there (running and gunning).

   But procedurally generating adventures would slot in real nice. Pick a faction, pick a location, draw cards or roll for rooms and layouts maybe.

6. .

7. Brian, I can only give you one plus at a time. 🙂

8. Todd Zircher Start a game with a hook, like the Lotus saying, “The grineer are up to something, Tenno. They’ve reignited their mining drills on a rig we thought was abandoned, and recon puts high-ranking soldiers coming and going. Get in there and find out what’s happening — and whatever it is, shut it down.”

   Then you’d pick classes which are really just ‘frames. Maybe in this hack the classes have their own stats, and if they die you have to pick a new one — and you pick a new one each session, each “mission.” Your operator earns experience, and you spend that experience each session to get your frame’s abilities unlocked. Each session that’s refunded, so the more you play, the more powerful a frame you can build each time.

   You’d also earn mods you can apply to change abilities and give stat boosts.

   Then just roll on a series of “tiles” and draw those on a grid, having each player take turns placing new tiles as they’re discovered.

9. [cranks Beastie Boys’ Sabotage.]

   Just imagining each tile and the Tenno would have to pick a move to pass through it. Stealth, firepower, melee, powers, etc. Your actions will inform everyone as to which move to use to pass through it.

10. 📌

11. Just finished reading the Wyrdish draft and I couldn’t help but hack it mentally on the fly to WyrdFrame. 🙂

    So, I guess that’s on my mighty to-do list for the future.

    There was one point in the rules I have a question about. During leveling up, it looks like all attribute progress is also cleared and that seems off. Is that the intent or am I reading it wrong?

12. .

13. Todd Zircher That is an intent, yes: when you level, you choose one attribute to increase if you’ve gotten enough hits and misses. You must choose between leveling at the end of that session to get a bonus which will apply immediately, or waiting until later to go after an attribute you’d prefer to be higher. It’s possible you can level up without increasing any attribute scores.

    This is, first of all, mitigated slightly by the plus one/minus one at the end of each session, so if you’re not getting enough hits or misses in an attribute you can make a necessary adjustment.

    But more importantly, it’s in place because your stats will carry over through reforgings over time. On a long enough timeline, a player could get a character who has a +3 in everything — this (combined with reducing attributes when you die) increases the length of time that will take.

    Additionally, since there are many sources of advantage/disadvantage, and less emphasis here on raw stats (no +1 forwards and the like), there are opportunities to make up for any stats that are lagging.

    Basically, it’s one of the costs of being immortal. 😉

14. Thanks for clearing that up. I missed the increment of the attribute bit and overly focused on the clearing of the tracks. So, what happens when you have two attributes that are ready to advance at the same time? Or is the maths such that you level up before you get into that situation?

15. On any level up you can choose one attribute that has hits and misses filled to increase. If you have multiple that are full, you still only pick one — the hits and misses in the other attributes are then reset and you start over.

    If you fill up the hits and misses but can’t level up yet, nothing happens — you might sit on a “full” attribute for a whole session — you don’t lose those hits and misses until you choose to increase that attribute on a level up.

    This symbolizes you reflecting on your growth and learning and choosing to cement that growth in the form of a stat boost — it’s not a natural background evolution that happens over time.

16. Cool. Are there any complete PbtA systems for GM-less play?

Comments are closed.