Let's hear it for the Baddies: Chess, Dragons, and '80's Cold War Musicals

So I've been pondering the forces you'll be fighting, and actions in general. Due to a number of motivators, I'm really trying to keep a combat round as simple as possible for the poor GM who has to handle an entire army, and for the players to be able to manage their characters quickly enough.

This has led me to Chess as a major design element.

(this has nothing to do with nothing, but man this thing will stick in my head!!)

Chess is simple, (more or less) balanced, and unless you got the special edition chess board, easy for a player to quickly figure out what's going on. Now, I can't quite off that level of simplicity with an RPG--nor would I want to. This is a hobby that does better when we can add components on top of core rules to make something special. Like Cooking--but that's another post...

What I can steal from chess is the idea of unit Ranks and Movement. Combined with the idea of Magic cards, and I got a whole lotta gas to cook with.

From a story point of view, Pawns are the henchmen, the front line guys that rarely get a hit in on the hero--but that's not their job. Their job is to slow the hero down and increase the sense of peril our heroes are in.

Then there are the "important" pieces of the back row. First, you have the "obviously important but not named" characters. These are the support bosses, the Imperial officer bossing around the storm troopers, or that guy in the old TMNT movies that barked things like "Ninja...Vanish!!" and vanish they did. By themselves, pawns are not that threatening physically to our heroes, but a good support unit can make them a much bigger threat.

Then there's the Special units. The one that your evil boss says "Unleash the Flying Monkeys/war-dogs/guys in red armor/tax attorneys!!" before sicking on you. These units probably have some special effects to back them up, and normally are just meaner and more deadly. Heroes will still probably win against them, but it might be at a cost.

Now, maybe you need more than Special--maybe you need a Big Bad Monster. Those things that are more special effects than characters, a veritable tidal wave of doom. Closer to forces of nature, something that nobody's going to be happy seeing.

Finally, there are the Named characters, the Champions--the guys who might actually get billing in the commercial for your game, or at least an action figure. These guys are at the level of the people they're going up against...if not the entire group, at least a singular hero.

These are broad and wide descriptors to be sure--but it's a place to start, and frankly I kind of enjoy the idea of building an army to stop your four PC's. Ranks help--they give the GM and the player's a glance of what they're dealing with, and how serious the situation is.

So now, back to Magic. As PbP and simple are two goals for me, I've quickly fallen to "why am I rolling to see if Thug #194 really hits you?" No, instead we're going to make sure that you can fit your villains into a simple spread sheet at least for a combat round. Quite simply, we don't care what the Skeletal Archer's social skills are like, since that's not why we brought him here.

Instead, the goal is that every NPC that you might fight will basically have a combat bar--This is their Melee, This is any ranged they have, this is how many hits they can take--basically a magic card description. Like the Magic Cards, we'll have room for special attacks or random things like "flying" or "Really scary" or "uncanny knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System", etc. Basically, we're looking for enough wiggle room for unit's to be unique to each other, but not so complicated that we all need special rules for every action other than "stab".

In general, the real trick of it is this--games should be simple enough to pick up fast, but complicated enough that you need to think about what you're doing to really get the most out of it. I know this is close to "salt is salty" when stated, but I think it's an easy thing to forget about.

I'm trying to build up an actual example of what these things might look like in case any of you are interested, so gimme a few days. This is the last crazy week for a while (until the next thing that makes me have a big crazy life), so I'm hoping to be able to really plug at a few things shortly.

Smiling Jack, the Restless Prince

Jack is friendly. He's polite. He might even show up if you try to summon him at a crossroads in the dark, or speak his name in a mirror 13 times (do not do this idly...he does not take well to those who waste his time). Jack can have a chat with you--he knows all about you. Jack wants to help you with your troubles. Jack wants to keep you from suffering what happens after you die. 

So I've been thinking about devils...

A very good friend and I once talked about Catholic horror movies, like the Exorcist. He said the thing that he feared and loved about the Devil as a villain was that Satan was personally invested in watching you fail. His whole day was planning how to make you, a mere mortal, miserable and ready to fall. He knew you, studied you, learned your weaknesses, looked forward to prodding you and see how you responded. This has combined with the oh-so-90's awesombad movie, 'The Prophecy', where a youngish Aragorn gives us a memorable representation of ultimate evil, chewing on the scenery like it's made of Cadbury Creme Eggs and his father's pride;

All of this leads us to Smiling Jack, the Prince of the Restless.

The Damned are not on the same level of reality as humans. They do not understand us, and while their minions may be able to talk to us, they will never really be able to 'get' what we are, just as we are unable to really have a decent conversation with an eternally-tortured immortal anthropomorphic of an impossible concept. Well...except for Jack.


According to Jack at least, Death is broken--there is no afterlife, no blissful darkness. No, when you die you get stuck in you head, a soul bound in your skull. You're stuck there, Jack says, until the World is Made right--when Judgement comes. That could be a very long time to be alone. Then JAck comes--a skeleton dressed in ruined and moldy finery, his skull polished, his teeth too sharp and his rictus grin too wide and too big.

Jack doesn't want you to be alone. He wants you to join his Revelry, the party he hosts, at least until the universe finally wises up and kills itself. Sure, you'll be decaying and eventually turn into a cackling skeleton-thing, but hey--at least you can have fun while that lasts!

See, ol' Jack knows how to fix everything--this whole fallen reality started when mankind went and broke the rules, killing his own family in an act that Zha didn't see coming. So to get things back to normal, all we need to do is have every human kill themselves or their neighbor in pennance. Then everything will be right as rain, and Jack can get back to being whatever he's supposed to be. You want to help ol' Jack? Or does Jack need to shatter every bone in your body?

Jack, or his more proper title of the Restless Prince, is friendly like the Godfather or an abusive parent--he says he loves you, but he has no qualms about doing terrible things to you to make you follow him. His goals are hideous, his hatred for you for merely living (how dare you) is rich and full, and his drive is relentless. Jack will only be happy once every last heartbeat ceases...maybe then he can finally get some rest.

The Restless Prince has many cults--his ability to offer a way out of death (even if it does eventually mean being a husk) is a popular one, and his charm can make people forget themselves. His cults tend to move quietly and work in sabotage and destruction. They are rarely mass murderers, however--Jack wants humanity to understand how pathetic they are and end things themselves. We need to be sorry for our state of existence.

The Hellgates that lead to Jack's 'Manse' are opulent palaces, filled with dance, dining, and music. If everyone wasn't a rotting, shambling corpse, it would be almost perfect. Jack tends to rely on his "friends" to stop attackers--hordes of the Restless ready to stand up from their feast and help interlopers 'join the party', as it were. These undead are not shuffling brainless monsters--they're people with personalities and goals, just sans pulse. They are undying in every sense of the term--there are no critical hits or weak points on the Restless, and stopping one normally means disabling until they can burn the body.   This can make attacking a Gauntlet a harrowing journey--it's easy for someone to cleave through a screaming monstrosity, but when your enemy is asking for you to stop and talking to you can cause an attacker pause. Jack doesn't go for giant monsters to destroy you--instead a Hellcrawl into his realms is a crushing fight designed to sap your spirit and make you decide to drop the sword, pick up a glass of black wine, and join in his eternal nightmare party.