SESSION 20C: DOMINIC AND THE SILVER FATAR

April 27th, 2008
The 8th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Tee returned to the Ghostly Minstrel and described the entire encounter to Dominic.

Dominic was still uncertain, but Rehobath had seemed receptive and concerned… without the disturbing overtones of the letter they had found in the Foundry. Of course, the Reformists at the Temple of the Clockwork God had seemed nice enough, too. But Rehobath was giving answers… and Dominic was a priest of the Church.

“Will you come with me, Tee?”

“Of course!”

So the two of them quickly returned to the cathedral. Unlike Tee’s previous reception, they found themselves swept straight up to Rehobath’s office. He rose to greet them, but as Dominic meekly approached his desk the godwood suddenly flared to a bright light.

Rehobath stepped back, clearly shocked by the display. Fumbling his words for a moment, he suggested that they retire instead to the small seating area near the fireplace.

The three of them sat down. Rehobath, with an eager air, began by asking Dominic to show him the mark of Vehthyl. Dominic with a nervous, sidelong glance towards Tee murmured a prayer to Vehthyl:

Mighty, majestic, and radiant,
You shine brilliantly in the evening,
You brighten the day at dawn,
You stand in the heavens like the sun and the moons,
Your wonders are known both above and below,
To the greatness of the Magus,
To you, Vethyl, I pray!

As he finished, his eyes blazed with silver light. Rehobath was entranced. “It is the mark… It’s hard to believe that one of the Chosen should have come to me.”

Dominic had many questions, but there was much Rehobath didn’t know: Although he could confirm that Maeda was the “head priestess” of the Temple of the Clockwork God (confirming Dominic’s suspicions regarding the letter), he had no idea what the “Iron Angel” she mentioned in her letter might be.

However, Rehobath was able to confirm that Maeda had formed an alliance with the Shuul, who were led by a mysterious man known as Savane. The Shuul had apparently constructed most or all of the Temple of the Clockwork God.

Dominic was most interested, however, in knowing about what had happened to him. How or why had he been chosen by Vehthyl?

But, as Rehobath said, “The ways of the gods are filled with mystery… Vehthyl perhaps moreso than all the rest. To be chosen by them is to have your life placed in the focal point of creation. There is no way of knowing why you were chosen – only that, because you were chosen, you are an important person in an important place at an important time.”

This didn’t do much to give Dominic the guidance he was looking for, but then Rehobath said, “We may not know why Vehthyl has chosen you, but I suspect I know why you should have come to me now.”

“I was once the Gold Fatar of Athor. I served on the Council of Councils and was esteemed. When the last novarch died, it was clear to many that I was destined to follow him – to speak as the Living Voice of the Nine Gods. But when that time came, the Emperor played politics.” The last word was filled with venom. “Another was named in my place while I was stripped of my offices and sent here to serve as the Silver Fatar of an outer cathedral. It was the most blatant interference by the Emperor in the matters of the church since the Years of Heresy.”

Historical Note: The Years of Heresy began in 615 YD when the Emperor of Seyrun became the leader of the Imperial Church and called for a Time of Reflection. It later became known as the Purging. For five years a bloody, internal war was waged against heresy cults. When the Emperor was assassinated in 620 YD, church and state became separate once again and the Time of Reflection came to an end shortly thereafter.

“I believe that you can help me, Dominic. I believe that you were meant to help me.”

“What do you want me to do?” Dominic asked.

“Simply to let yourself be known. Your presence here in Ptolus is a sign. I would like to call a convocation in, let’s say, two days. Could you return here on the 10th?”

Dominic was hesitant, but he agreed. Rehobath then summoned in several members of the Order of the Silver God. The Order were the primary scholars of the Church here in Ptolus, and Rehobath wanted them to examined Dominic carefully and confirm the veracity of the mark. This they did – not only observing the glow of the eyes, but also testing its various properties (most particularly its ability to detect magical auras). When they were satisfied, priests escorted Tee and Dominic in honor to the front doors of the cathedral.

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The 1st Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade was supposed to be “a storytelling game of personal horror.” That was literally the entire back cover text, except for a quote from Günter Dorn‘s Das Ungeheuer Darin (a fictional work). Early in the book, Mark Rein*Hagen writes:

This storytelling game provides a way to experience a terror of an all too immediate nature, for it allows you to experience the horror from the other side of the mirror. The horror of Vampire is the curse of what it is like to be half-beast and half-angel, trapped in a world of no absolutes, where morality is chosen, not ordained. The horror of Vampire is the stirrings of the Beast within and the cravings for warm blood. Perhaps the greatest risk of playing Vampire is seeing yourself in the mirror. To play this game, you must bear witness to the madness within you, that which you strive to master and overcome, that which you cannot bear to face.

Why, then, in actual practice did the game so often manifest as “katanas & trenchcoats” — a style of play that others have described as “superheroes with fangs”?

This shift in focus seemed to happen despite the best intentions: Vampire players were all about the “personal horror” and “it’s an immersive storytelling experience, not a combat simulator” selling points of the game. They strongly self-identified with those values. And yet their games would somehow still often end up being katanas & trenchcoats.

In some cases, of course, this style of escapism was simply more appealing to the players; the vampire as a cool and enigmatic avatar was more fun than the vampire as a form of self-reflection on the nihilism of morality and the fragility of humanity. But if this were the fundamental issue — that the appeal of escapism will necessarily override an RPG’s intended style of play — then you would expect to see this be more or less universally true.

And it isn’t.

Take, for example, Call of Cthulhu. Here is another popular, widely played horror game which emphasizes a shift away from the D&D-style “combat simulator,” featuring characters whose humanity and sense of identity is steadily eroded by their exposure to cosmic, uncaring, inhuman truths. But even in the case of Pulp Cthulhu, which deliberately seeks to blend that style of play with a sort of Indiana Jones savoir-faire, it still appears to be passingly rare for “shotguns vs. Cthulhu” gameplay to emerge.

Why?

Well, there are a number of factors that probably contribute. But the title of this essay probably gives away the fact that I think it largely boils down to the game structures (or lack of those structures) supporting the desired style of play in both Vampire and Call of Cthulhu. Because, as I’ve noted in the past, players gravitate towards structure.

It’s easy to simplify this down to, “Call of Cthulhu has a Sanity mechanic!” And then people say, “But Vampire had a Humanity mechanic!” But this is, in fact, an over-simplification because it fails to look at the game structures that were built around those core mechanics.

HUMANITY vs. SANITY

At first glance, Humanity and Sanity seem similar: Both are numerical meters. Over time, characters lose them. When the meter runs out, the character is permanently “broken” in a way compatible with the overriding theme of horror in each game and can no longer be played as a PC.

In the case of Vampire, however, although a small grab bag of mechanics were based on the character’s current Humanity score, virtually no structures were built around the loss of Humanity. The Degeneration mechanic (which didn’t even have a name in 1st Edition) was something that the GM was supposed to trigger more or less by fiat when the PCs took certain types of actions.

Superficially, this once again appears identical to Call of Cthulhu‘s Sanity mechanic. Here, too, the GM is supposed to trigger a sanity roll whenever a certain condition is met during play. So what’s the difference?

Look at all the game structures in Call of Cthulhu built around the Sanity mechanic: Every creature you face triggers a Sanity check. Virtually every grimoire of forbidden knowledge you read triggers a Sanity check. And the game also has a very specific default scenario hook which is, “Go investigate strange creatures and grimoires of forbidden knowledge.”

So basically everything in Call of Cthulhu is built around the Sanity mechanic. By contrast, Humanity is just off in a corner twiddling its thumbs.

Furthermore, as you lose Sanity in Call of Cthulhu you become more likely to fail your sanity tests. It’s a path of accelerating decay that ends in madness. Vampire, on the other hand, utilized a “hierarchy of sin”:

• Humanity 10: accidental wrongdoing
• Humanity 9: any sort of purposeful wrongdoing
• Humanity 8: shoplifting
• Humanity 7: theft and robbery
• Humanity 6: unintentional killing
• Humanity 5: wanton destruction
• Humanity 4: causing injury and personal harm
• Humanity 3: sadism and perversion
• Humanity 2: murder
• Humanity 1: the most heinous and demented acts

If your Humanity has already fallen below the point where a particular type of act is considered a “sin,” then you no longer have to make checks for it. The system is literally designed to plateau your character at a Humanity score equivalent to whatever style of play you prefer and then stop calling for Degeneration checks.

So not only was the system not supported by structures that would make it a central pillar of play, it was actually structurally designed to remove itself from play entirely.

And that’s why Call of Cthulhu remains focused on its existential horror and Vampire… doesn’t. It’s not designed to.

Go to Game Structures

This will start off with a bit of a quick review of the advantage/disadvantage system, so feel free to skip down a bit if you’re already thoroughly familiar with that.

In 5th Edition, various circumstances and abilities grant either advantage or disadvantage to a character attempting an action: If you have advantage, you roll 2d20 and keep the higher result. If you have disadvantage, you roll 2d20 and keep the lower result. If you have both advantage and disadvantage, they cancel out (and you just roll 1d20). And they do not stack (so no matter how many things are giving you advantage, for example, you still only roll 2d20 and keep the highest, not 3d20 or 5d20 or 10d20), which also means that even one factor granting advantage will cancel out any amount of disadvantage (and vice versa).

There are several benefits of the advantage/disadvantage system compared to giving circumstantial modifiers to the die rolls:

• The modifiers you’re rolling against are not in constant flux, reducing the amount of in-game calculation required.
• It is viscerally pleasing and immediately rewarding to roll 2d20 and take the higher/lower result. It’s fun to do and you can literally see how your advantage benefited you or your disadvantage cost you by looking at the result on your gained/discarded die.
• It helps maintain the “bounded accuracy” of the system; advantage helps you, but you can still only get die results of 1 to 20.
• “Advantage” and “disadvantage” are incredibly useful terms of art, which designers, scenario writers, and DMs can quickly and efficiently use for any number of purposes. For DMs, in particular, they provide a very simple way to make a fast ruling.

The reasons for not allowing advantage or disadvantage to stack are:

• To maintain the simplicity of that fast, efficient DM’s ruling. Once you’ve determined that something in the situation grants advantage, for example, you don’t have to keep thinking about all the other things that might grant advantage: You have advantage. Move forward. Roll the dice.
• You don’t need complicated stacking rules, nor do you need to allow abilities to stack in potentially absurd ways. This removes one vector by which an RPG system filled with myriad options can suddenly break from the unexpected combination of those options.
• There are some mathematical effects of allowing advantage to stack multiple d20’s into a single roll, the most notable of which, in my opinion, is that your percentage chance of scoring a critical hit radically expands. (This last point is debatable, however, as many would argue that this is perfectly reasonable if you’re enjoying a massively advantageous situation. It also only applies to actually stacking additional dice, but not to the scenario in which you stack all advantage and all disadvantage and then compare the totals to see whether advantage, disadvantage, or neither applies.)

This system has one additional advantage (pun intended) that I want to call specific attention to: The simple, clear-cut mechanical concept of “advantage” also encourages players to engage creatively with the game world in order to create fictional positioning that grants them advantage.

Another example of this that I’ve seen in actual play is Numenera‘s concept of an “asset” — on any given task, PCs can have up to two assets, each of which shifts the difficulty of the task by one step. The first asset “slot,” so to speak, is often occupied by having the right tool for the job. The second asset slot is usually dependent on having some sort of advantageous situation in the game world, and this naturally results in players seeking to create those in-world circumstances that will give them an asset on a task.

In both cases, the clear-cut term of art coupled to the specific fictional situation in the game world reinforces the fiction-mechanics cycle. The mechanic thus, almost paradoxically, encourages players to engage in the game in non-mechanical ways: It’s not enough to just “play your character sheet” by saying “I hit the orc with my +6 attack bonus,” because the mechanics are no longer confined to the bonuses on your character sheet.

Arguably, of course, you can get the same benefit from any system that allows GMs to assign situational bonuses and penalties. But in actual practice, the clear-cut mechanical concept with a term of art attached to it provides a common framework. People just talk about and think about “advantage” and “assets” in ways that they don’t talk about and think about a miscellanea of +1, +2, or +5 bonuses.

THE PROBLEM

Speaking of actual practice, however, this final — and arguably most important — aspect of advantage tends to frequently disappear at the table.

The problem, ironically, is the very versatility of the system. Because advantage is such an easy mechanical hook to use, the designers of the game have used it to model all sorts of things. It’s hard-coded into everything from class abilities to spells to magic items. For example:

Dwarven Resilience. You have advantage on saving throws against poison, and you have resistance against poison damage (explained in Chapter 9).

Or:

Beacon of Hope. This spell bestows hope and vitality. Choose any number of creatures within range. For the duration, each target has advantage on Wisdom saving throws and death saving throws, and regains the maximum number of hit points possible from any healing.

Or:

Boots of Elvenkind. While you wear these boots, your steps make no sound, regardless of the surface you are moving across. You also have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks that rely on moving silently.

Because advantage doesn’t stack, however, tension is created between the designer’s utility and the DM’s utility: If a character has hard-coded advantage from equipment or racial abilities or whatever, the DM immediately loses the ability to meaningfully model the game world through advantage and the player is simultaneously discouraged from engaging with the game world in order to create favorable circumstances.

This is not a desirable outcome: Basically every time the game hard-codes advantage in this way, it makes the game less interesting in actual play.

Numenera recognizes the same basic problem, which is why it provides two asset “slots.” The solution is not quite so straightforward for 5th Edition because there are so many pieces of equipment, for example, that provide identical forms of advantage, that simply providing two slots will simply create min-max builds that stack multiple advantage and still shut down situational creativity (because both slots will already be filled).

But we can find a solution, I think, through parallel thinking. And by simply cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

SITUATIONAL ADVANTAGE

Situational advantage is any advantage which is derived from a character’s immediate circumstances; particularly and specifically those cases of advantage resulting from characters taking actions or positioning themselves in order to create specific situations which grant them advantage.

Situational advantage, and only situational advantage, stacks with other advantage:

• If you have hard-coded advantage (e.g., the advantage against poison damage from dwarven resilience) and situational advantage (e.g., the character manages to dilute the poison before being forced to swallow it), then you roll 3d20 and take the best result.
• One source of disadvantage can cancel EITHER all hard-coded advantage or all situational advantage, but not both. (So if you have all three, you’d still have advantage and roll 2d20 while keeping the best result.)
• If you have two or more sources of disadvantage, then they will cancel both hard-coded and situational advantage. (You would simply roll 1d20 and resolve the action check normally.)

Note that not all forms of advantage appearing in the rulebook are necessarily hard-coded. Some describe situational advantage. (The optional rules for flanking, for example.)

What about advantage from spells? Is the advantage provided by a spell situational? There is a potentially simulationist argument that they are (or perhaps that some subset of them are, although that way probably lies madness). But the primary meta-game point of all this is to encourage players to think creatively as they engage with the game world instead of just throwing a prepackaged block of mechanics at a problem.

And a spell, after all, boils down to a prepackaged block of mechanics.

So if I had to make an ironclad rule, I would say that advantage from spells is always considered hard-coded advantage.

Fortunately, the entire point of situational advantage is to prevent hard-coded rules from disempowering the GM. So I will by happy to override this ironclad rule whenever players think creatively in order to create situational advantages from their spells. For example, by using a create food and water spell to water down the poison before it’s fed to the dwarf.

In front of the windows, Rehobath sat behind an enormous desk of godwood – the pale, almost pearlescent wood glowing faintly with a white light in the presence of divine magic.

When describing a game world, I try to make a point of integrating the magical, supernatural, or otherworldly aspects of the setting – the stuff that makes the setting unique and different from the world as we know it – in to the setting as a whole: Magic in D&D, for example, shouldn’t only show up in the loot piles or as the central McGuffin of the current scenario.

This is how you make the fictional world come alive. You can see a great example of this in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, in which the environments are filled to the brim with magical effects, even when that magic isn’t centrally relevant to character or plot. It’s why the Wizarding World is this vibrant, living place which fans find so inviting as a place to imagine living in despite the fact that none of that worldbuilding really “makes sense” if you think about it logically for any amount of time whatsoever.

This isn’t limited to fantasy, either. When I ran Eclipse Phase, for example, I looked at the transhuman technology available and then very specifically think about how that technology would be realized in fashion. So when I’m describing characters they have prehensile hair, color-changing colors, nictating membranes on their eyes, holographic “make-up” projectors that turn their face into a living art project, and so forth. When it came time to write the Infinity core rulebook, I made sure we included a whole section on this type of stuff for the GM to riff around.

A few partially overlapping categories to think about:

• Furniture
• Fashion
• Building materials
• Common conveniences or appliances
• Trinkets

Also think about garbage, trash, and detritus. When we think about the cool things that some speculative conceit would make possible, I think we often default to thinking of those things as being new or shiny. But the thing that will make the future feel fundamentally real to someone from 1895 is not the automobile: It’s the rusted Chevy on cinderblocks in the front yard. It’s the patch of leaked coolant slicking the parking lot asphalt. It’s the busted hubcap laying askew in the gutter.

Numenera is basically a whole game based around this conceit (with the titular numenera being mostly the broken or discarded technological remnants of past civilizations), and also takes it to the ultimate extreme by postulating that the very dirt of the Ninth World is, in fact, made up of particles of plastic and metal and biotechnical growths that have been eroded by incomprehensible aeons.

Similar principles can also apply even without speculative fiction, however: What makes a ‘70s police precinct different from the world that the players are familiar with? (Check out the original Life on Mars television series to see this particular example realized in detail.) Or just life as a police officer in general? Or the environment of a squad of soldiers in Afghanistan? Or just daily life in Paris?

(This assumes, of course, that the players are not currently on tour in Afghanistan or living in the 9^th Arrondissement.)

The past is a foreign country. Foreign countries are also foreign countries.

SESSION 20B: TEE AND THE SILVER FATAR

April 27th, 2008
The 8th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

When they had a moment alone, Dominic asked Tee if she would go on his behalf to see Rehobath, the Silver Fatar of Athor. The note they had found at the Foundry regarding the “Chosen of Vehthyl” had left him deeply concerned about the meeting he had scheduled the next day at the Temple of the Clockwork God. Were they setting him up for something? Were they planning to do something to him?

Dominic felt that he was in desperate need of guidance. But he also didn’t want to walk into the lion’s mouth if it turned out that the Imperial Church was as interested in him as the Reformists.

Tee was more than willing to help. After leaving Dominic at the Ghostly Minstrel, she headed to the Outer Cathedral of Athor.

Athor’s Cross

The cathedral was ancient, its presence in Ptolus a testament to one of the three Merchant Princes who had gone to the Novarch in Seyrun and begun the Great Conversion. It was designed around Athor’s traditional cross and layered with intricate iconography and complex ornamentation. Graven images of saints and figures of pantheistic significance covered almost every surface, including the ornately carved pews in the sanctuary. Holy knights of the Order of the Dawn could be seen guarding every entrance.

Order of the Dawn

Tee had suspected it would be more than a little difficult to get an audience with Rehobath, but she had – if anything – underestimated how impossible it truly was. She was shuffled constantly from one priest to another without ever seeming to get any closer to the fatar, but just as she was about to give up a prelate who happened to be passing by stopped in his tracks.

“Excuse me, would you be Tithenmamiwen?” he asked.

Tee nodded.

“I couldn’t help overhearing that you wished to see the Silver Fatar. He had mentioned meeting you at Castle Shard. If you wouldn’t mind waiting, I’m sure we can find you a few minutes to speak with him.”

The prelate shooed the other priest away and led Tee to a luxuriously furnished waiting room – a place of crimson satins and velvet cushions. Tee was still left waiting for more than an hour, but eventually a priest came in and escorted her to Rehobath’s personal office.

The office was at the apex of the cathedral’s tower. A huge, vaulted ceiling left Tee feeling particularly small as she was led down the long length of the hall. A fire burned in a mantle of marble to her left; to her right statues of Athor in each of his aspects flanked the wall to the right. At the far end of the chamber curtains of crimson silk hung before tall windows looking south across the Temple District and across the lower length of the city.

In front of the windows, Rehobath sat behind an enormous desk of godwood – the pale, almost pearlescent wood glowing faintly with a white light in the presence of divine magic.

Rehobath rose at Tee’s approach and smiled broadly. Tee bowed slightly and then sat down.

“Mistress Tithenmamiwen,” Rehobath said. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. Prelate Adlam tells me that you had some matter to discuss with me.”

“Yes,” Tee said. “I have a friend who I think might be in trouble. I recently… umm… found a note that I think is talking about him. I think its very disturbing.”

Tee produced the note and gave it to Rehobath. As he read the note, the look of concern – which seemed like more of a polite façade than anything else – was replaced by one of genuine shock.

“Maeda thinks she’s found the Chosen of Vehthyl?”

“I guess so,” Tee said. “I’m sorry… but what does that mean, exactly?”

“Yes, of course. Let me explain.” Rehobath settled back into his chair. “The Chosen are living saints. The gods themselves have chosen them as direct conduits of their will within the mortal world.”

“You mean the Chosen can talk to the gods?”

“In a way. It would be more accurate to say that they are the living will of the gods made manifest.” Rehobath’s eyes danced over the note again. “Is it true that your friend has the Mark of Vehthyl?”

“I don’t even know what the mark would look like.”

“There are many possible marks, but the Mark of Vehthyl is most often described as eyes which glow with a silver light.”

Tee shifted nervously. “Yes. I’ve seen that.”

Rehobath could barely contain his excitement. “Then your friend has been honored. Would it be possible for me to speak with him?”

“Possibly,” Tee said. “The letter has frightened him. But I’ll talk to him about coming to you.”

“Thank you.” Rehobath paused for a moment and then looked at her significantly. “Your friend Dominic is an itinerant priest, isn’t he?”

Tee quickly denied that Dominic was the friend she had been talking about… and then realized that she’d probably just confirmed Rehobath’s suspicions. Flustered and angry with herself, she made her excuses and farewells.

Rehobath rose and walked her to the door himself, asking her once again – on the way – to have her friend come and talk to him as soon as possible.

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