A coyote story

Once upon a time, the coyote was walking through the land and he stopped to rest on a rock.

He noticed the rock felt very cold, and he felt pity for that poor rock and put his blanket over the rock so it wouldn't be so cold.

He resumed his travel, but when the night fell, he felt the cruel chill himself, and he decided to recover the blanket. He went back to the rock and took it, but as he left, the rock, in its anger, moved the the whole hillside and rocks started falling down the slope. 

The coyote was squashed by the boulders. 

A white man found his body, as flat as a rug, and took it to his home where he put it on the floor as a rug.

Some time passed, and one day, the trickster coyote suddently came back to life and went right out the door.

I heard this story this morning and I wanted to transcribe it from memory before I forget it. 

 

 

World of Dungeons: Pokemon Spirit Combat

In World of Dungeons, magic is done primarily by summoning spirits. Yet these are the only rules present for it. Wondering how I could expand it, and mostly, wanting to define some example spirits for a list, I ended up wanting to turn magic into Pokemon-style combat. As such, spirits should have a list of 1 to 5 abilities that provide either firepower (against other spirits or the wizard's enemies), defense (same) or some utility (MOs in pokemon, utility spells in all rpgs). 

Spirits are usually minor spirits, not named or unique (a rule that can be broken at any moment); some actually seek for a wizard in order to "level up" or spend their excess energy; others are too dumb to know they are being catched. Lawful-aligned spirits might want to help their own, while chaotic demons will take fun in corrupting their wielder. 

The template for spirits in the pokedex should be something like:

NAME: generic name for the spirit, but you can rename your own, why not?
LORE:  The most important points are: habitat, a common way to make contact in order to "catch" it, and its usual mood. The latter can influence how the spirit behaves on partial successes and failures.
ATTACK#1 (maybe something useful at low level)
ATTACK#2 (the rest of the attacks are learned in order)
ATTACK#3 (though sometimes there might be a choice in the order) 
ATTACK#4 (mostly on through the middle progress)
ATTACK#5 (the idea is to put the most gamebreaking ones at the end)

I had this idea that, when you command your spirit to do something (roll 2d6+mod) and get a partial result/failure, the attack may be at random. Roll 1d6 and if you roll over your intended #attack, it happens. Else, the spirit may do the rolled attack or just act on his nature.

The easiest leveling up method for pokemons spirits is to have them grow when their summoner does: each level up of the caster, he can/must level up a spirit instead of getting some or all their HP (actual amount to be discussed). This also sort of fixes the fact that fighters progress the same as wizards in World of Dungeons.

An important note on spirit combat is that spirits do not die when defeated: they are debilitated. They don't even track hp: Instead they have a resistance value: if they are damaged by that amount, they are "stunned" for a round. If they are damaged for double that amount, they are defeated and need to rest. Damage and armor work as normal, but spirit attacks have types (electric, holy, fire, ice, etc), and spirits have resistances and weaknesses to those types (this means less, more or maybe no damage)

The next entry will probably be some spirit prototypes.The more I think on this project, the more I see that this whole blog was pointing towards it since the beginning. (even these ff8 GFs tie in here somehow)

 

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art by Suzuki Sarunobu

related (in my head) bonus: on the origins of the Miko

The origin of the Miko dates back to the end of the Jomon period (-14,000 to -300 BC) when women shamans entered into convulsions and trances to transmit the messages of the deities. Over time, they grew in importance, performing religious services and taking charge of various political and social activities.

From the Nara era (710 - 794), the political powers of the archipelago never stopped trying to regulate the activity of the Miko, to both control it and prevent abuse.

During the Sengoku period (1477 - 1573), the institution of the Miko also suffered from the chaos of the country and many priestesses brightened up in the country, becoming "arukimiko" - literally, "itinerant Miko" and exercising activities close to prostitution.

It was during the modern era, from the Edo period (1603 - 1868) to the Meiji era (1868 - 1912), that their role was gradually formalized, the practice of shamanism being prohibited under the Tokugawa while the imperial restoration prohibits any spiritual activity. 

The Miko that populate Shinto shrines today is easily recognizable. They wear a red hakama, the chihaya (white kimono top with wide cuffs), Japanese sandals, and quite often a hanakanzashi, a flower ornament that serves as a headdress.

They take care of keeping the shrine shop, offering omikuji, helping with the maintenance of the shrine, assisting the kannushi (Shinto priests in charge of the shrine) as well as performing the traditional dances, known as "Miko-mai".
 
It is often young virgin girls who hold these jobs, in the form of volunteer work or part-time work. They usually leave him when they get married.

There are several types of Miko, three categories if we follow the ethnologist Kunio Yanagita:

    jinja miko ("shrine miko"), the miko who participate in dances and rituals
    kuchiyose miko ("miko medium"), the miko who speak for the dead
    kami uba ("woman of the gods"), the miko in charge of the worship of the deities

The Miko has become, like other ancient symbols of the country, elements of Japanese popular culture. Often presented in manga with a broom in hand in shrines, they have the stereotypical figure of being temperamental and fierce.

 

 

 

1979: WORLD OF DUNGEONS, REVISITED

If you don't know about this game, go download it right now. It has got a lot to love, it's free, and its 4 pages + the Character Sheet. I loved this game and played with its rules at the time (as with everything, never ran it without changing most of it). I went back to check it out after all this years, and I saw so many things so clear that I had to write them all in here. I will from now on assume you have read the rules aforementioned. Here I go. 

1. Get rid of the big 6 attributes (str con dex int wis cha). Instead, each PC rolls 3d6 in order for their skills: +1 bonus for each 6 rolled, -1 if you roll only 1s, 2s or 3s. At each level up, there is a random chance to level up one skill. 

Athletics - Awareness - Deception -Decipher - Heal -Leadership - Lore - Stealth - Survival 

Right now, there are attributes on top of skills, on top of special abilities, with classes somewhere in the middle of the ladder. 

2. Decipher is kind of strange actually, maybe its not very useful unless there are a lot of scrolls in the game; and maybe there should be. It can also be tied to the way that you can learn about new spirits to summon (by reading about them in scrolls). OTOH, Leadership becomes the "willpower save".

3. Having armor soak 1 to 3 damage, and having weapons (and special abilities) increase in damage as flat bonuses over a d6 makes an ugly dynamic of one offsetting the other. I'd implement Into The Odd's same armor approach vs different damage dice (d6 for small weapons, d8 or d10 for big ones, having d4 and d12 for impaired or enhanced attacks). 

4. Not just that, but adopting Into The Odd's combat mechanic of just rolling damage and never to-hit fixes the monological combat, leaving the 2d6+bonus mechanic for doing stunts during combat (for example, athletics roll to climb over a colossus, or stealth roll to achieve extra damage). Complete it with an "athletics save" at 0 HP, with a 7-9 result being just incapacitated.

5. Rework of at least half of the special abilities is mandatory; but as this is a quick entry I will only really do it if somebody shows interest on it XD. Autowins like scout and reflexes are not interesting to keep, neither flat bonuses from Slay or Volley. Those are much better done by adding an extra d6 to damage, for example.

6. A small bestiary of around 12 entries (1d6 + dungeon level, for example) with some number appearing, treasure type, etc would help a lot. 

7. Drinking quicksilver as an extended practise amongst magicians does not suit my aesthetics, nor has any paragon in any related fiction. No real rules are given for quicksilver overdose, nor on how hard it is to get a spirit into an object. (Which is cool and leaves the details to the table or the GM, following the idosincrasy of the game) But it would be the easiest shit ever to emulate the same practical result without the quicksilver and just saying that "you can only do X instant summons per day due to the nature of magical rules"

8. The most important: Somebody should make a list of 36 6 spirits to summon by mixing 1 pokemon + 1 pagan deity or creature from a real world folklore, and put that into the PDF instead of dedicating a whole page of a total of four to FUCKING NAMES.