With all due respect to the Dungeons & Dragons fans out there, I’m having a hard time mustering any sort of interest in the upcoming 4th Edition. I’m not making any disparaging remarks here, or doubting that it will be a quality product that will thrill and delight players around the globe. It’s just… not something I’m interested in.
This is a new draft of an old game I wrote years ago, a game that for various reasons was never published. you can guess what the defaults setting was supposed to be, but these mechanics can be used for any sort of fantasy setting. What follows is only the core of the system, with no setting material. Any and all feedback is appreciated, although I don’t know that I’ll do anything with this idea no that I’ve got the basic idea out of my system.
What follows is not intended to be an accurate representation of the historical Spanish Inquisition, Rather, it is an amalgam of various inquisitorial practices spanning several hundred years, created with the intent of providing interesting and challenging villains within the Brimstone and Gall campaign setting for the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG
The Spanish Inquisition was first implemented by a monarch who wished to enforce Catholic orthodoxy within the then divided Spanish kingdoms. Its original mandate gave it jurisdiction over baptised Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims who chose conversion over banishment. Over time, its efforts expanded to include Protestant sects that began to break away from the central teachings of the Church.
What follows is not intended to be an accurate representation of the historical Spanish Inquisition, Rather, it is an amalgam of various inquisitorial practices spanning several hundred years, created with the intent of providing interesting and challenging villains within the Brimstone and Gall campaign setting for the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG.
Contrary to popular belief, the Inquisition does not simply torture and kill those it suspects of heresy. When an Inquisitor comes into a town or village to begin an investigation he first announces a grace period, typically a week or two, to allow those who have strayed from Church doctrine to come forth to confess and repent. Many of these are people who have listened to teachers of false doctrines, such as the Cathars, Jews who have converted but still maintain Jewish trappings or practices within their households, or those who have been led astray by heretical priests who are the main target of the Inquisitor’s investigation.
Creating a supporting cast for settings and campaigns has become sort of an automatic thing for me. I know what sorts of roles will need to be filled and I crank out NPCs to fill them. You need fire support, aka “cavalry”. You need information sources. You need materiele support, aka a “Q” or a “fixer” who can hook you up with weapons and supplies. Those sorts of characters are easy to create, because you can surmise the context under which they’ll appear. For that reason, coming up with a pre-generated crew who can easily be relegate to the status of “mate” was easy. Coming up with supporting character like El Capitan Quixano and Pintel & Raghetti was easy.
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This was one of those “I thought everyone did that” ideas that, based on some recent conversations, not everyone does. Which is good, because I’m low on ideas right now and need something to write about.
Many role playing books are poorly indexed. Many people consider this to be an unforgivable sin; browse around some rpgnet threads and you’ll see what I mean. For big companies that can afford professional editors, yeah, it’s disappointing. For small companies it’s understandable, especially when the writer, editor, publisher and janitor are all the same person. I like the DIY nature of the hobby, so I tend to find workarounds to bad indexes, and even the best index will occasionally leave out something I think it important.
Something in my head went “bing!” (other than the alleged migraines, I mean) and I suddenly remembered that other game with an island chain made from a smashed-up land mass: S. John Ross’s Uresia: The Grave of Heaven. I vaguely remember that it’s also got a sea-serpent goddess.
So any plagiarism/lack of credit where it’s due that I’ve committed to this point has been unintentional. I’m going to re-read my copy of Uresia (BESM edition) to make sure my subsconscious memory hasn’t ripped off anything that my conscious mind is misrepresenting as original, as well as to idea mine for stuff that I will acknowledge as the source of inspiration.
Given that Uresia is anime-inspired high fantasy and Brimstome and Gall is pulpish pirates with low-fantasy tendancies, I’m not too worried.
My other thought is that Uresia might mesh well with Savage Worlds…
Stay Tuned.
One of my favorite rules hacks, when I ran the first “season” of SILVER Agents using Mutants & Masterminds, was making Hero Points and Experience Points into the same thing. Instead of handing out Hero Points for X and Experience points for Y, I gave each player a set amount of Hero Points at the start of each game session (I think it was 3; it may have been 5, but no matter; it would be based on what feels appropriate for the individual campaign). At the end of the session, any points left over could be banked, or spent to improve existing abilities and gain new ones.
The players liked it, and it accomplished a couple of things. First, moved them way from making in-game decisions that were XP-driven and focus on playing in character and doing what was more logical to the story*.
The waiting room at the lab rectangular, with chairs on the two long walls. Everyone was packed together on one side, some folks even standing or making children sit on the floor in front of them. The chairs on the other side were empty. Even though there was more than enough room for people to spread out comfortably, one whole wall of chairs was unused. Above those chairs hung a flat screen television, broadcasting the news. People would rather be packed together, or even forego a seat, then sit where there was no view of the TV.
I took a seat directly under the television, pulled a book out of my riot bag, and began to read. First, I took a scan of the room. There were about 15 people there. No one else had a book. Only a few were actually watching the TV. A guy in a cowboy hat was snoring, and his embarassed wife kept poking him in the arm trying to wake him up. One woman was flipping through an old magazine, looking bored and slightly annoyed, but she’d periodically glance up when the new network’s jingle played. As people came in the first thing they seem to notice was the TV, then the reception desk; after checking in, their eyes went back to the screen with furtive glances toward open seats as they mentally negotiated the chair/TV dilemma. A woman in her 20s, conspicuously pregnant, stood leaning against a wall until someone was called back to have blood drawn, at which point she took a seat. She was in obvious discomfort, yet had made a conscious decision not to take one of the open seats that offered no view.
I read a few pages of my book before I was called back. Although there were now at least four people standing, no one scrambled to occupy the space I’d left vacant.
As previously discussed here, I like starting the first session of a new campaign not only in the thick of an adventure, but in the middle of a fight scene. It gets the action going right away, establishes that the party is already working together, and can help establish many features of a campaign.
In reading through the Pirates of the Spanish Main RPG, they’ve got some advice on using In Media Res in your adventure structure (p.191). There’s also an interesting section on using it in conjunction with cliffhangers (p.194) which dovetails nicely with my own opinions. When you run a cliffhanger, you stop in the middle of, or just before, a fight scene in order to end on a high note and leave the players in suspense. The following session then begins in media res, where the previous session left off. When you use in media res by itself at the start of a campaign, you’re pretending you’re at a later episode in a longer serial (Episode IV: A New Hope, anyone?).
One thing the PotSM rules suggest is giving the players involved with the In Media Res scene an extra Bennie (which can be a fate point, hero point, drama point, or whatever in the system of your choice) for use in that scene. If it’s not used there, it’s lost. This emulates the old movie serials where it appeared all was lost in the cliffhanger ending, only to have the characters pull off a miraculous turnaround at the start of the next chapter.
© 2010 UncleBear Media
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