Introduction and Welcome!
Into imagination’s fury I plunge thee. Ride the storm and ye shall be enriched.
-The World of Synnibarr, page 1 (introduction)
Archive for the ‘other systems’ Category
Mazes and Monsters Manual chapters 1-5
Monday, March 7th, 2011
Rules for helping Tom Hanks escaping the Mazed condition in chapter 5.
Look for 13 more pages of rules, 19 illustrations from the movie, and 1 screencap from Burton’s Hamlet.
Quests
The Quests chapter includes helpful rules like:
When you start a new hero, you will be much less powerful than your friends. Remind your comrades that it is their duty to babysit you for a few levels, until you are slightly less useless than you were. On the plus side, your uselessness may result in all the heroes being killed in the maze, in which case everyone will get to start over at level 1!
Combat
Sample from the Combat chapter:
Candles should be set up on and around the Game Board: their hypnotic flickering will help the players reach the psychologically vulnerable state in which Mazes and Monsters is the most fun!
Changes to chapters 1-3
After playtesting, I also made some rules changes to chapter 1-3: the surprisingly common situations where you roll a 11 (fumble) followed by a 12 (crit), or vice versa, is now called a “save,” and allows you to take a free turn if you do something other than what you were planning.
I also made fumbles less common, since they are sort of a drag, and ended up using something very like the D&D 3.5 rules for confirming critical hits. I didn’t plan it; it just sort of happened that way.
Mazes and Monsters Manual, chapters 1 to 3
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011Download my lavishly-illustrated playtest PDF of chapters 1 to 3 of the Mazes and Monsters manual, containing
CHAPTER 1: HOW TO PLAY THE GAME
CHAPTER 2: HOW TO MAKE A HERO
CHAPTER 3: SHOPPING IN TOWN
This should be everything you need to get your characters ready for play.
It’s coming out pretty well, I think. Give it a look and see what you think. Let me know any errors, confusing parts, or things that look otherwise weird.
(Note: Chapters 1-5 are now available!)
two adventure ideas, one upside down
Friday, February 18th, 2011I got one of those double books that is one novel on one side, and then you flip it upside down and there is another novel on the back!
No one would put the blame on her. But were you to blame Jacob Chen himself, a man who could punch a program of a million words into a computer?-Endless Shadow by John Brunner
This is a crappy sci-fi book from the early 60s about how computer programmers run the transit system that keeps the galaxy together. Computer programmers are so smart that they are given any difficult job, including non-computer-related action-hero James Bond stuff. As a computer programmer myself, I find this highly unlikely.
Also, when Earth interacts with a new culture, they send a computer programmer, because their intelligence makes them uniquely insightful about the emotional states of others. As a computer programmer myself, I utter a single ringing bark of mirthless laughter.
This book was difficult to read, because I couldn’t figure out what was motivating everyone, because everyone’s motivations were derived from pop psychoanalysis. Everyone had a complex or whatever. There was also some sci fi stuff. There was a mystery, and it was solved when it turns out that someone had surgically given themselves devil horns! And that revealed what complex they had? or something?
There’s a tiny germ of a D&D idea here. Someone alters themselves to get tiefling attributes. Why? They must be trying to fool someone: either themselves, or the tieflings, or the non-tieflings (they’re trying to frame the tieflings), or the devils. If they’re trying to fool the devils, then either they are very dumb or the devils are very dumb.
Let’s expand the latter into a D&D mystery adventure. A supernatural disaster strikes the city! Legend has it that this type of disaster can only be caused by a tiefling calling on an ancient devil promise. The PCs must determine which of the handful of tieflings are the guilty one.
Except at the last minute, a human’s hat falls off and his horns are seen! It turns out he has magically given himself tiefling attributes in order to hoodwink the devils into killing his enemies. I guess we’d better make the guilty human young, so we can have met his parents and established his human pedigree.
OK, it’s not the best idea in the world, but this is not the most inspiring book.
—
mazes and monsters playtest concludes
Monday, February 14th, 2011Last week, our playtest heroes fought their way through the Crypt of the Twin Kings (one good, one evil), overcoming skeletons, traps, and a sealed room where they’d have to listen to Led Zeppelin… forever.
Now they stood before a magnificently carved ivory door that bore engravings of the Twin Kings fighting monsters! This was undoubtedly the end of the maze, the treasury of the Twin Kings themselves! Next to the door was a decrepit side-passage that terminated in a dead end. On the wall of the dead end were, carved into the stone, words in a strange, unknown language.
Our Holy Man, Sansange, was elated! She had been waiting for a chance to cast her new power, “Read Strange Languages.” There was just one problem: the spell cost 20 spell points. Sansange had 20 spell points at maximum, but had already spent 10 on casting an Instant Heal after a battle with skeletons.
Sansange convinced everyone that the words must be of paramount importance, and everyone should camp out and regain their spell points, and then next morning, Sansange could translate the words.
Here we hit, and fixed, a few rules problems. My initial rules had it that resting overnight restored 1 HP and 1 spell point per character level. We agreed that it might be fine for HP to regenerate at this rate, but that a full night’s sleep should restore all spell points.
We also adjusted the cost of Instant Heal. Initially, all level 1 spells cost 10 Spell Points, so that, for instance, a level 1 Holy Man could cast “Instant Heal” twice per day.
Instant Heal cured 30 points of damage: however, since everyone had 2d12 or 3d12 HP, no one had anything near 30 HP. Sansange felt bad about spending 10 points to cure a minor injury.
We decided that, since Instant Healing was the bread and butter of the Holy Man class, we’d give it a nonstandard Spell Point price. It could now cost any number of Spell Points: it cured that many points of damage. You could use it like D&D’s Lay On Hands to efficiently fix minor injuries. At higher levels, with bigger wounds, it became less efficient, but new healing spells would become available then anyway.
Rules issues resolved, the heroes made camp. Since there were no fatigue rules, Sir Robert, who had spent neither HP nor Spell Points, stayed up all night to guard the camp. And it’s a good thing he did! The camp was attacked by Mystic Skeletons!
Mystic Skeletons were much like the other skeletons the group had fought, except that, instead of attacking, they could try to Maze a player. A Mazed player would see everyone as a skeleton, and wouldn’t know who to attack.
This fight was more grueling for the party than the previous one, with several characters becoming Mazed and attacking their friends. Walmart Jr, hurling daggers at the Sansange the Holy Man, posed the greatest threat. She only stopped when someone gave her a chance to break the Maze by reminding her that “your father threw himself to his death in a pit! If I was really a skeleton, how would I know that?”
When the battle was won, the party got its reward: the chance to finish their sleep and refresh their Spell Points. Sansange cast her spell and read the words written on the wall, which said:
(more…)
Mazes and Monsters playtest: combat!
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Last week, we left our heroes down a player, thanks to Wal-Mart the Frenetic’s spectacularly poorly-timed suicide, and outnumbered by skeletons, facing long odds in a totally untested combat system. It was looking dire.
I quickly explained the combat system, which was fairly simple. No initiative, we just take turns clockwise. Tell the Maze Controller what you want to do, and he’ll roll all the dice.
The Cavalry Arrives
By the time I was finished with the explanation, the adventurers were joined by a new hero, Walmart Jr. the Frenetic! Son of Walmart I, and with suspiciously similar gear, Walmart Jr. had been rolled up in less than a minute, and, announced the player, was here to “take revenge.” Revenge on who? On the pit into which Walmart I had jumped? On his dead father, for throwing away a promising life?
We broke out the d12s and ran the first combat. A theme emerged that would characterize the entire session: a statistically improbable number of 11’s (critical fumbles) and 12’s (critical successes) were rolled. An 11 means that you subtract 10 and roll again; a 12 means that you add 10 and roll again. Frequently, people would roll an 11, roll again, and get a 12, putting them right back where they started. Once, someone actually rolled 11, 12, 11, 12, the odds against which are high – one in more than 20,000 – and the results of which are boring – a net of 0.
It’s too early to tell whether this was merely a freak of the dice, or whether some statistical principle of which I am not aware means that d12s always roll high when Tom Hanks is in the picture.
Despite having no particular dice advantage, Sir Robert the Fighter handily destroyed the skeletons, while the frenetics were quite ineffective throwing their mind-controlling fairy dust. This introduced another theme, which would continue throughout the night: Sir Robert was an unstoppable combat behemoth who could do no wrong, while the other characters missed more than they hit. This especially amused everyone because Sir Robert’s player is generally the most combat-optimized character in any RPG system. Even his extraordinarily simple Mazes and Monsters was dominant – entirely, I believe, through a psychic connection with his dice.
Combat against the skeletons was pretty simple, and felt a lot like D&D combat except with d12s. You needed to roll better than 6 on a d12 to hit, and then you rolled damage. Skeletons were resistant to pointy weapons, like thrown daggers, which meant that the damage d12s were rolled twice and the worst roll was taken. The frenetics were armed with daggers and bows, which meant their weapon attacks where fairly futile. Sir Robert soon put away his spear in exchange for a mace from a fallen skeleton. (Over the course of the game, he collected weapons from each fallen foe, until he ended up with one of everything.)
The skeletons had 10 HP each: on average, each took about two hits, so it didn’t take too long before the players were victorious. The frenetics and the Holy Man had taken a few points of damage. Brave Sir Robert, of course, was entirely untouched.
Traps and Treasure
After the combat, the players rappelled into the pit to look for treasure. I warned them, “You see what looks like the glittering of gold. It could be treasure – but it could be a trap.” They hesitated, but the lure of treasure overpowered them. They reached for the treasure, and —-
IT WASN’T A TRAP.
The players collected a sackful of Pieces of Twelve, and also found a magical glove. Cautious examination revealed that it was a magic power, “Read Strange Languages!”
Our Holy Man had seen a list of the Holy Man powers, and had been talking up the 2nd level spell, “Read Strange Languages,” all night. The word “strange” struck her as particularly funny. She was elated to discover that this glove was the trinket that let her cast this very spell! From this point on, she would be constantly asking if there were any strange languages in sight.
The party continued on. The came to a four-way intersection, with a lazy-susan floor plate that spun people randomly when they stepped on it. Each branch of the intersection (except the one from which they had come) led to a door.
I warned the players that the doors might lead to treasure, but “could be a trap.” They devised a complicated system for opening the doors that involved tying a rope to a door handle, spinning on the lazy susan, running up a perpendicular corridor, and then tugging the rope. It’s a good thing they did, because the first door they opened fired a spear down the hallway! The players’ paranoid precautions kept everyone safe.
The other two doors revealed a fight with some skeletons, which yielded a key, and a locked door, which opened to the key.
Music Maze
The next room contained my first test of the Maze and Monsters Issues system. According to my dungeon key, when the players entered, a drama mask on the wall would zap a random player with black lightning, and — something would happen. I would play it by ear, but it would involve the Issue that that player had written down on their character sheet.
The black lightning hit Lothar the dwarven frenetic. He confessed his Issue to the group: “Just the other day, I was wishing that, one day, a Led Zeppelin song would come on the radio, and my wife would say, ‘This is a good song! Who is this by?’. She just doesn’t like Led Zeppelin that much.”
Here was a meaty issue that could bear no end of psychological prodding! I just hoped I was up to the task.
I had a giant black dog appear in the room. It put its paw on Lothar’s shoulder and said, “As a boon, I will allow you and your friends to hear the greatest of music — forever.” Walmart Jr.’s lute burst forth into spontaneous electified rock music. At the same time, all the doors swung ponderously shut.
Lothar’s player, who really is quite a Led Zeppelin fan, had “Black Dog” on his iPhone, which he generously played for us… on repeat… for the rest of the scene.
As well as a test of Issues, this was the first test of the Maze system. Lothar was Mazed, which meant he was content to stay in the locked room listening to Led Zeppelin forever. (As was his player, I believe.) The other players had to snap him out of it: but each avenue of aid could only be used once.
Sir Robert had a Trait that allowed him to use a bonus Trait die when “convincing others of his good intentions”, so he gave a speech to the effect that he didn’t want Lothar to deny himself the full range of musical experience by fixating on one – admittedly perfect – song. Sir Robert rolled very well, getting a critical success (as was his wont), and this was really good enough to snap Lothar out of it and continue the adventure. The players, though, really wanted to get into the issue. They continued to discuss it for at least the length of “Black Dog”. Finally, everyone came to the (possibly false) conclusion that, as there is no light without darkness, you couldn’t appreciate a song unless there were people who DIDN’T appreciate that song.
As Maze Controller, I suppressed my belief that this conclusion was logically indefensible, and, in fact, made a mockery of the study of logic itself. The important thing was that Lothar, and his player, had met an issue in the maze, and had defeated it. And along the way, he had probably cleared up some engrams or whatever.
The doors unlocked, and the black dog gravely shook hands with everyone, except Wal-Mart Jr., who insisted on doing a fist-bump.
Next time: The playtest concludes with a bang! Or maybe more like a snap, followed by a prolonged scream.
Mazes and monsters playtest!
Monday, February 7th, 2011Now that I have most of the Mazes and Monsters rules in some stage of completion, I decided it was time for a rules playtest.
The players assembled on a snowy Monday, ready to have their malleable minds molded or marred by the horrors of the Maze.
We watched a scene from Mazes and Monsters to get everyone psyched. Everyone seemed thrilled to be paying homage to this important film. Some of the players misunderstood and actually LAUGHED at it, like it was a comedy or something. Just a tribute to Tom Hanks’ irrepressible comic timing! He’s funny even when he’s not trying to be funny. That’s what made Philadelphia such a laugh riot.
One oversight we immediately noticed is that I didn’t bring the MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT, one thousand candles! We had to use stupid old light bulbs for illumination. I’ll have to remember to put a note to the Maze Controller somewhere prominent, like the back cover: “Maze Controller: Remember to bring candles!”
Character Creation
We ended up with a Fighter, a Holy Man, and two Frenetics. The lack of a rogue class was lamented. I know, right? If only there was some movie evidence of a rogue!
Based on the fact that Jay Jay’s frenetic was “the cleverest of all sprites”, the group decided that they could assign themselves fantasy races.
Character creation was very quick: after Hit Points were rolled, people just needed to roll for their Trait and Issue. One of the Frenetics rolled an 11 (a critical fumble) during Trait selection and got a negative trait: Bad Luck. The Good Luck trait lets you add a Trait die (essentially giving you a reroll) to one die roll per session. It wasn’t entirely clear what the opposite of that was, so I decided that it meant that once a session, the Maze Controller could demand a reroll of one of the player’s rolls and take the WORST of the two rolls. This led to an important rules doctrine for rolling a bad trait: “If it’s not clear what the opposite of a good trait is, the Maze Controller is encouraged to come up with the most annoying interpretation.”
Characters rolled Issues secretly, and jotted down their privatemost secrets on their character sheet, right under Hit Points.
Shopping worked pretty well. I had a list of gear and spells for sale, and people coordinated with each other to make sure the party had at least one rope, axe, awl, chisel, and basically one of everything that was for sale.
Introductions
As in the movie, the players each introduced their character in the most deadpan monotone possible. I’ll recreate the introductions as well as I can remember:
“I am Lothar the Frenetic. I am the toughest of all dwarves. My main power is a magical bag of fairy dust, which I may use to control my enemies and make them kill each other.”
“I am Wal-mart the Orcish Frenetic. I am very impulsive, and my bad luck will be my downfall.”
“I am Sansange, a Holy Man with excellent dental hygiene. I have many spells and powers by which I maintain that hygiene in myself and others for the glory of Marcia and Neville.”
“I am Sir Robert the Fighter. I wander the earth righting wrongs. I am irked by people who exhibit bad manners.”
Shall ye enter?
I described the maze as follows:
“You stand before the Tomb of the Twin Kings. It is said that the Twin Kings, one good, one evil, stand guard over a royal treasure. It is also rumored that mystical skeletons patrol the tomb’s winding passageways. Thus warned, shall ye enter?”
With one voice, the players cried, “AYE!” — which was a relief, let me tell you, because I didn’t have a backup plan for the evening.
The first room in the maze contained nothing but a book on a lectern.
I had explained to the players that, in Mazes and Monsters, traps were extraordinarily deadly, but the Maze Controller was required to note that any trap “could be a trap”. In other words, if you’re not warned that something is a trap, it isn’t a trap. The players, though, were taking no chances. They turned pages with the tips of their swords and finally pushed the book into a sack via a carefully-described remote-control Rube Goldberg maneuver. Clearly, 1st edition D&D had scarred my players’ psyches. They were in luck, because shit was about to get PSYCHODRAMATIC.
After ascertaining that the book was not trapped, the players wanted to know what it said. It turned out that every page had a single nonsense sentence, in the form
A man holds two doves
A goat jumps two valleys
A Holy Man blesses two beggars
A candle holds two flames.
Etc.
Etc. was not actually enough for the players, though. They kept turning pages and asking me what else they read. I came up with
A trap takes two lives
A wolf eats two sheep
A coin has two sides
all the while hoping they would not keep on turning pages and come up with HUNDREDS MORE SENTENCES, which it looked like they were planning to do. Luckily they finally ran out of interest before they finished the whole book.
The player running the Holy Man reported that she had sort of forgotten I had to make up all these sentences; she thought she was reading a real book. The lines of fantasy and reality? Successfully crossed! The rest of this playtest would be spent in the liminal realm between sanity and madness.
The next room had three doors, each opened by a pressure plate on a mysterious altar. The players correctly decided, based on the ample evidence provided by the book, that the number 2 was important in this dungeon, and chose to open Door Number 2. This was too bad, because I had cool stuff behind the other doors, including mind mazes and deadly traps that were sure to have wiped out several players!
In the next room, things got really weird – and it wasn’t entirely the game’s fault.
The room contained a vast pit spanned by a bridge. Walmart the Frenetic, whose player was in despair over rolling a negative Trait, HURLED HER CHARACTER TO CERTAIN DEATH in the pit.
Because Walmart’s characteristic was bad luck, everybody decided that Walmart should roll to see if her bad luck prevented her from ending her life. I rolled two dice for her Jump roll and took the least favorable. Fortunately for Walmart’s player (and unfortunately for Walmart) she succeeded, and fell to her death! Walmart the frenetic… was dead!
Death, Dying, and Skeletons
I explained the death and dying rules: When you died, you immediately started rolling up a new first-level character, and as soon as you were finished you could rejoin the others. The player of Walmart the Frenetic quickly started work on her new character, Walmart Jr.
The rest of the heroes had other problems. Attracted by the meaty thump of an orcish frenetic falling to her death, emaciated shapes began shuffling across the bridge. Skeletons — four of them! Just enough to give the combat system its first shakedown in a fair fight against four heroes!
Against three heroes, though, who knows what could happen!
mazes and spells
Monday, January 31st, 2011I’m pretty far into my Mazes and Monsters RPG draft by now. When it comes to actually writing, I’m finding that I have to make up a lot of stuff from whole cloth. The Mazes and Monsters movie didn’t do all the work for me.
For instance, I’ve figured out the spell system, but now I actually have to fill out the spell lists. I have a handful of spell names, mostly gleaned from screencaps of Robbie’s and Kate’s character sheets.
Click the picture to enlarge if you want to squint and try to read Robbie’s character sheet.
Robbie’s spells are neatly divided into “spells” and “powers”.
The spells are
invisibility
sleeping potion
stop motion
the Eye of Timor
The powers are
Raise the Dead
Instant Healing
read strange languages
and something that looks to me like
mister mister
but it can’t be, because that is an 80s band, not a spell.
Any other ideas what it could be? Misty Magic? Make Image? Make Maze? Make Movie? (Maybe this explains how Mazes and Monsters got made!)
Kate’s fighter also knows spells!
There’s a thumb in the way, but these spells look to me like
Melts Metal
Freeze Water
Make [tacos]?
Move [stuff]?
The tacos spell seems slightly implausible, because if there was a spell that did that, we’d probably see the gang eating tacos at their game sessions, to “stay in character.”
I’ve decided that spells are divided into three categories: “spells” (available to all characters), “powers” (available only to Holy Men), and “tricks” (mentioned once by Jay Jay, and thus probably available to Frenetics).
Today I’ll try to flesh out the Powers available to Holy Men. I’ll write one spell per level, from 1 to 10.
Instant Healing: Level 1 power. Restores 30 HP.
Healing is the bread and butter of the cleric-type class, so this spell should be available at level 1. 30 points of healing will probably fully heal first- or second-level characters.
Look! Where the light was pointing!
Read Strange Languages: Level 2 power. You can read any written language. The spell ends when you fall asleep.
This Level 2 spell will be less popular than the level 1 healing spell, but hopefully, to compensate, Maze Controllers will put in lots of important foreign-language clues.
Holy Water: Level 3 attack power. The character is able to prepare a number of vials of Holy Water equal to their character level. Anyone can throw these vials as a normal attack. Any undead or demonic creature hit by a vial of Holy Water takes damage with a trait die.
Each Holy Water lasts until the caster falls asleep, at which point it becomes normal water.
This is the first spell I’ve written that has no basis in anything in the movie. I’ll have to do a lot of this, if I want to produce at least 30 spells, powers, and tricks.
One of the problems with low-level spellcasters is that they must hoard their spells while their fighter buddies get to swing swords all day. Inspired by the spell named “Sleeping Potion”, I decided that some attack spells might be pre-combat spells that gave the caster a limited number of pieces of ammunition.
Imagine if D&D’s Magic Missile gave first-level magic-users multiple missiles, which could be spent over the course of the day. It would give 1e magic-users more staying power over the course of the dungeon, without dropping the limited nature of 1e magic.
Full Healing: Level 4 power. Restores a character to their full Hit Point total.
A Holy Man needs a suite of successively more powerful heal spells. I’ve boosted their power relative to D&D, allowing a fourth-level character to fully heal someone, because I think Mazes and Monsters characters can’t count on getting back to town and resting whenever they want.
Seal Door: Level 5 power. Lock a single door. The door requires a RONA to open equal to the caster’s level + 3. If anyone fails this RONA, they may not try again.
You! Shall! Not! Pass!
Make Thunderbolts. Level 6 attack power. Creates a number of thunderbolts up to the caster’s level, which are all held in the caster’s left hand. The thunderbolts can be thrown one at a time, and follow the rules for thrown weapons. If a target is hit, it takes Lightning damage. The spell ends when the thunderbolts are used up, the caster lets go of the thunderbolts, or the caster falls asleep.
After a couple of levels of sealing doors and healing, the Holy Man should be ready for a straight-ahead attack spell around now. Lightning seems suitably divine.
Healing Potion: Level 7 power. Creates up to 5 Healing Potions. Anyone who drinks one of these potions is restored to their full Hit Point total.
Each Healing Potion lasts until the caster falls asleep, at which point it becomes normal water.
After giving full healing to Holy Men at level 4, the only way to escalate is to heal the whole party. Because the spell produces potions, the Holy Man is freed from the task of providing in-combat healing – he just hands out potions before the battle starts.
Make Maze: Level 8 power. Allows you to put a creature into the Mazed condition. You must be within throwing distance, but you don’t need to throw anything. You speak up to 20 words: the creature believes whatever you say. For instance, “The other monsters have been plotting to steal your gold!” or “The room is filled with tacos that you must eat before you can attack us!”
As with any Maze, the victim gets an immediate check to escape that Maze. The RONA to escape the Maze is equal to your level.
I decided that make maze was more likely than mister mister.
Fly: Level 9 power. The caster, or another character of his choice, is able to fly for the next hour.A flying character who takes off from a sufficiently high point (at least 1300 feet off the ground) who flies straight up for the entire hour can reach Heaven.
Robbie climbs WTC because he believes that he can fly to heaven to be reunited with his brother. I guess the extra height of the WTC makes all the difference.
Raise Dead: Level 10 power. Restores a dead person to life, with half of their maximum Hit Points. It only works for a short period after the person’s death; after that, you need to fly to Heaven to find them.
fantasies and scenarios
Monday, January 17th, 2011
TOM HANKS: I played a game called Mazes and Monsters a little too much.
KATE: No kidding. What level?
TOM: Uh, nine. Ninth level.
KATE: So am I! Isn’t it wonderful to be finally creating your own scenarios?
TOM: Yeah, yeah, and your own fantasies too!
OK, the above dialogue raises a few questions. For instance:
WHAT
It’s hard to see how these fit into standard RPG structure, and, indeed, upon first hearing, it sounds like arrant nonsense – nonsense that merits slaps to the writer. But if we’ve learned nothing else, we’ve learned to TRUST MAZES AND MONSTERS. If we haven’t learned that, we’ve learned nothing.
And we’ve been wasting our time.
Scenarios
Here’s my theory: a “scenario” is the intro text that introduces an adventure. For instance, “You stand before the palace of the Ghosts of the Gravelands. Fell spirits float through its ancient corridors. It is rumored that among the palace’s treasures are mighty gems that may trap men’s souls.”
At ninth level, players gain the ability to write this intro dialogue, thus choosing the nature of the maze, typical monsters or a boss who inhabit the maze, and the kind of treasure that can be gained. The Maze Controller still writes and controls the adventure within these parameters. After all, the Maze Controller’s powers are like unto those of a god. Even gods take suggestions, I guess.
Fantasies
We know that Mazes and Monsters grows progressively more psychologically difficult (and powerful) as you advance in level. However, we haven’t really explored the dangerous world of the unconscious mind. Our current rules sound like pretty vanilla 80s RPG design. We need to push the pop-psychology envelope with our Fantasy rules. As Blondie says, “We work out our problems in the caverns and then we leave them there.”
Like scenarios, fantasies must give players some agency over the perils they face. Again, Mazes and Monsters anticipates the shared narrative of modern indie RPG design.
Let’s start by getting some information about the players’ psyches. We’ll use this information to populate the game’s mazes with suitably cathartic (or destructive) challenges. At various levels, every player rolls a d12 to select a question from the following chart and gives the answer to the Maze Controller.
1. What makes you angry?
2. What betrayal do you fear?
3. In what way do you feel like a failure?
4. What part of your behavior feels out of control?
5. What’s one thing you’d like to preserve from harm or change?
6. What would you like to tell someone so they really understand? Who?
7. What do you worry about most?
8. What would make you a success?
9. What would you like people to admire about you?
10. Describe your most frightening nightmare.
11. What event could drive you to madness or despair?
12. What magical power would allow you to solve all your real-life problems?
Armed with this information, the Maze Controller can create thinly-disguised, hamhanded challenges and rewards that have real psychological effects on the players. These are called “fantasies”. For instance, if a player says that they would like the power of resurrection to bring back a dead relative, you make up a pretend relative of the character, kill them off, and then offer the character a quest that will let them conquer Death! The Maze Controller can do real psychological healing! Or harm. Hard to predict which. That’s part of the fun!
Example of play:
Maze Controller: OK, Tom, your real brother died, right? Your character, Pardieux, has a brother, and he just died. You watched him fall off a building! As he fell, he called, “Help me, brother!” but you were too far away!
Tom: (weeps)
Maze Controller: If you can find the Clock of Chronos, you can reverse those events! It will be as if it never happened. The Clock of Chronos is in the Dungeon of Lemnos…
At level 9, players can “create their own fantasy”. Once per level, they may seize control of the story and narrate their own thinly-disguised challenge, quest or hero’s journey. The Maze Controller sets all the RONAs and makes the dice rolls, but otherwise, the player has control over the fantasy until it has been conquered – or until it conquers!
Example of play:
Maze Controller: OK, guys, you’ve just returned from the Maze of Whispers. You –
Tom: Just a minute: I’m creating a fantasy. My character gives his earnings to his brother, who immediately runs away and gets lost in the city. After a few days, he has been robbed and beaten. He’s starving in an alley… he’s attacked by thugs… he cries out! “Brother! Save me!” but I’m to far away to help! He’s… (weeps)
Maze Controller: Right. Guys, if you can run through the mazes of the Slums of the Golden city, you MIGHT be able to intervene before Tom’s brother is killed.
Wow, it sounds really irresponsible to hand that kind of manipulative emotional control to people with no psychological training! Unless, of course, those people are fully licensed Maze Controllers or players able to play at the 9th level.
mazed in monsters
Monday, January 10th, 2011OK, we’ve got pretty much a complete game out of Mazes and Monsters. We’ve figured out combat, skills and spells: everything we need for a generic sword-and-sorcery game.
All that’s remaining are a few Mazes-and-Monsters-specific rules hints dropped by the characters. Frankly, a lot of them don’t receive a lot of rules support in the movie at all, and some almost seem like offhand fake-jargon that’s being made up on the spot. But we know that
THAT’S
NOT
TRUE.
There is Underlying Truth to be found here: we just have to dig it up.
Get your shovels!
Mazed
One of the focuses of Mazes and Monsters is the thin line between fantasy and reality.
Equally thin is the line between players and characters. Both players and characters can become confused about what’s real and what’s not.
We’ve determined that when a character is confused, they enter the “Mazed” condition. A Mazed character’s mini is placed in a special square on the Mazes and Monsters gameboard, which I will call the “Maze Prison”.
When a character is Mazed, their perception of reality can be skewed by whoever is imposing the condition. Friends may appear enemies and vice versa; an open door may appear to be a solid wall; or the character may be totally immersed in a fantasy world that has no connection to reality (or, technically, a fantasy world that has no connection to the shared fantasy world of Mazes and Monsters: a higher level of fantasy, if you will.) All details of the fantasy are determined by the creature or effect that imposes it.
The power of a Maze is measured by the RONA check to escape it. Like other RONAs, it ranges from 3 (Easy) to 9 (Hard).
When an effect Mazes you, you may make an immediate RONA check to shake off the illusion. If you succeed, it exerts no more power over you. If you fail, you are locked into the illusion until some outside force challenges your delusion. Such an event is called a Maze Disruption, and it allows you to make a new RONA check, against the same difficulty, to break free of the illusion. If this new check fails, you incorporate the disruption within the Maze delusion, and that same effect will no longer provide you with a chance to break free.
Example Maze Disruptions:
-If you’ve been Mazed to believe an open door is a solid wall, you may make a new RONA check if someone passes through the door.
-If you’ve been Mazed to think that your friend is a fierce Gorville, you may make a new RONA check if your friend talks to you and reminds you of your shared friendship.
Caution: According to Mazes and Monsters, these are rules for real life as well!
Next week: We’ll cover more movie jargon, “fantasies and scenarios”! Will this be the sexiest Mazes and Monsters article yet??
