Frontier lands as a Megadungeon (Dark Tower inspired)

So I was trying to make something playable about the Dark Tower. But instead of just using the setting, I want to just get the inspiring bits. I don't want to feel constrained by book characters or be a huge nerd about the lore details (because I know myself, and if I go down that way, I will become so obsessed with sticking with canon that I will get stuck in the research phase)

And what the hell, deep down I want freedom. Freedom to create, make and discard. There is something about me and the mystic western imagery that asks me to have a room to put the things that I might come up with.

For now, the Appendix N that I am working with is: 

The Dark Tower series (IV and VIII mostly, as they are the ones that deal most with the youth of Roland and take place on the Mid-World)

Into the West TV 2005 show (Greatly reccomended, never heard of it until recently even if it was produced by Steven Spielberg. I love how it shows the dynamics between indians and whites without plainly ignoring or glorifying any side. It might not be "really what happened" but it is consistent enough that works for me.

Final Fantasy 8 (If you think about it, the plot is easilly portable: A school state that trains young kids to kill, then sends them out in missions as "mercenaries?" "paladins?" "witch hunters?". Also the anachronistic world suits partly into the vision that I have for this setting)

This blog entry that got me thinking on "how would a Middle Earth equivalent that is based on the american frontier instead of middle ages Europe look"

The premise is that the PCs are young gunslingers (which are a sort of equivalent to knights) that have some missions given by their elders, and must eventually go on a quest for the Dark Tower (or the setting equivalent, though we could probably use it without copyright issues as it comes from the Robert Browning poem)

Then I started to look into quest-based games to see how they worked (Pendragon, PBTA, etc). But since I got enamored with the OSR sandbox style, where PCs decide their path and gain XP for tangible shit (gold by default) games where the GM gives the players a quest through the voice of an NPC dont work much for me. I just dont know how to do it anymore. 

My idea is to run the whole game as an overworld megadungeon: Lets explain.

Gilead, on the left side of the map, is the starting town. To the west of it, the wilderness works as a Level 1 dungeon floor (with LVL 1 adequate monsters and that). On it, you can find one or more passages to get into new lands, that work as a dungeon level 2. And such until you get to level 10 where the Dark Tower in its field of roses is supposed to lay. This works as an invisible wall: theoretically there are no walls that prevent you to pick up a horse and riding towards it, but you will have to find your way into 9 "dungeon levels" that will trigger crazy monster encounters unless you have leveled up yourself.

Certain pathways might make you "skip levels", so, for example, you can go from the lands of level 2 to the lands of level 6. But an scalated progression from 1 to 10 is always possible if you search for it.

This might remind you a little about the "West Marches" thing, but it differs in something crucial: The lands you cross are significantly bigger. The West Marches supports itself on the premise that all sessions begin and end in the base. In here, once you delve beyond level 2, you are not supposed to sleep home anymore. Reaching out into the wilderlands is a matter that might take years.

Of course, you might find other towns in the wilderlands. But the more you go west, the less chance for them to be "civilized", and the more for them to be weird. That if they are not a bunch of ruined stones by the time you get there. It is not easy to stand long in a level 5 belt. Of course, you can rest assured that those who do are powerful warriors, have adapted somehow or are doomed to perish.

Just a reminder to put battle horns on the inventory list

As I don't want to bother in creating a world in detail (neither would do it with a megadungeon) I will try to rely on random generators. Lets say that when you find a settlement, roll 2d6 + the dungeon level

3-6 - Small outpost (Farm or the like)

7-8 - Small Town

9 - Bigger Town or City

10- Fortress

11 -Nomad tribes

12- Small outpost (abandoned)

13- Small town (abandoned)

14 - Big town (abandoned)

15 - Fortress (abandoned)

16-17 - Nomad tribes (weird)

18-19 - Small outpost (weird)

20-21 - Small town (weird)

22 - You reach the Dark Tower

Basically the further you get from Gilead, like it is the bastion of civilization that allows other towns to flourish, the rarer the conventional towns are. Instead you go getting more and more indian tribes, fortresses that can withstand the hazards or failed attempts of colonization.

This is an over simplification, but more or less what I have in mind. Actual geography like mountains, rivers, sea lines, roads, etc overlaps with this "danger" map.

Over this base, I leave some thoughts:

* All of this starts counting to the West of Gilead. But on the other directions there might be other lands differently incremented in level (so they are, in a way, locked; until the PCs level up a little). The city being the home of a true knightly force is the reason that it can stand being confronted with high level lands. Still, the only level 10 land ever is the one in the west, where the tower lies.

* The level might spike suddently by entering a dungeon or a cave

* The idea of having towns set on the level 4 wilderness pairs nicely with the feeling that frontier towns must have felt like, back in the 1820s

* Once again (and this is a problem I stumble upon many times) XP for gold makes no sense if the PCs are from a knightly or elevated condition, with interests beyond the material. At least if the only XP comes from gold. XP must come at least from three sources: treasure (including outlaw bounties), monsters and (yes, I know what I said) quests. But I got some ideas to automatize the latter by derivating them from the "lawful" or "friendly" monsters in the "bestiary". 

* I love technological anachronisms. I found out that one can advance technology very hard without breaking the fantasy feeling as long as you leave out mass production (Gilead being a monarchy should be able to stop untamed capitalism), roads and cars and, to a degree, TV. A land that is not practicable to pave or to build cable lines for much time (because there are constant earthquakes, monsters or other disturbs) gets rid of the latter two, and, by taking away trade, slows the first one considerably. Still, you can have a small amount of autogenerated electricity (windmills, etc) and power up small devices as fridges, music devices, battery powered tools, radios (I love the idea of a radio station transmitting across dangerous wastelands)... etc. On the other hand, I love the trope in which electrical devices are more prone to being tricked against you by evil sorcerers.

* That being said, technology is set around the 1840s, with the advenment of the Colt Dragoons. Gilead aesthetic and customs are set on the arthurian era, with a foot on the medieval retellings and the other deep down on the primitive celtic myths.

* The world is divided on "baronies" or "states", some of which have big cities as capitals and some of which are in safer zones than others. At some point, the frontiers are blurred and the territories are unclaimed. Trains only go to level 3 zones, and are dangerous to drive beyond that. The most extended way of transport is by horse.

* Alternativelly, a map in the style of Out Run in which each level bifurcates into two, which later might converge, can also work.

*The whole bulk of the game is the bestiary. That is where the color comes from. Depending on what to choose as encounters, the game will feel more medieval fantasy or more "real life west", with my ideal point somewhere in the middle. Dragons, elves and dwarves as we know them are 100% off this project (I see many people talking about pinneaple on pizza, but little thought is paid to those who mix dragons and revolvers). I'm not doing goblins with guns either, and no different races are to be playable. Curating a good bestiary is the key to get the feeling straight. This takes me to the next point.

* In normal D&D, you hit monsters with swords until they come down. And it is ok, it makes sense somehow, because of myths, tradition or internal archetypes. But firearms are different. Firearms are not suited to kill monsters but men. Sometimes men with other firearms. This is just one of the reasons that makes fighting and monsters different in classic fantasy than in western clichés. It is ok to have monsters with great hp that will go down in a few shots. Most high level humans are to be like this. But it is kind of anticlimatic to shoot down fantasy monsters to death. Thats why I'm thinking that beyond human, undead, really big animals (its tricky to draw a line on where a big animal stops being an animal and starts classifying as monster: lets think about the Graboids) or demonic versions of those (Like in the White Buffalo, or Mononoke Hime) many monsters are not to be of the kind that can be "just shot"; but rather to be avoided, dodged by pure horse speed or dealt in other ways (and maybe shot once they are weakened or unmasked). From the top of my head I'm thinking on:

- Enormous sand hands that form on specific parts of the desert and grab/swallow people into the ground (See Stephen King "the beach" short story)

- Wraiths. I just love using them.

- Psychic leeches of any kind

- Colossus of the Shadow of the Colossus type

- Monsters that can pass as friends or manipulate the PCs' acts.

- Any of the entries at the Goblin Punch's Book of Tigers suits a setting like this better than common fantasy bruisers.

- Same can be said about Lovecraft-type monsters in general. 

- Non-monster threats such as thinnies or starkblasts (Dark Tower), earthquakes, tornados, stampedes, plagues, etc. 

- Its OK to have a gunfighting vs missile wand confrontation with a sorcerer, if previously you have succesfully defeated some number of his magical tricks.

* Some staples that are very useful in this genre are magically enhanced bandits, really clever tacticians, former gunslingers turned evil, indian tribes who are wary of strangers, cultists of forgotten gods and any equivalent of John Farson's rebellion, all of them normal humans (except when they are not, of course)

* PCs game loop usually ends at Gilead, though if they can find other rest/supply settlements, they can also use them for the services they have. Maybe some specific resources (like revolvers, for example) can only be found consistently on that base city. But thats OK. There is one last trick that you can play at some time, which is to stage the downfall of Gilead at a certain point of the PCs life. Be sure to make it so a part of it is played by NPCs and monsters (Doppelgangers? Evil Wizards?) that the PCs have previously met. That will make it personal. 

* If you've read Wizard and Glass, you might remember that all factions relied on things like the wind direction, the height of the grass or wether or not it would rain (remember when Cuthbert and Alain dug the powder ditch to blow up Citgo?). If you are sneaking somebody and you are both riding a horse, there is a chance that the horses will say hi to each other and give your position away.

I think its important to use all that. I want players to wait until the moon is full to attack a given enemy, because it allows them to see them from a greater distance. I don't know how to implement it beyond learning all those tips by heart myself and using them, but I find it worth it.

I want to also encourage them to search and use real life survival tips, with rolling only required if it has a chance to fail. In that sense, your player's knowledge is your character's knowledge. Unless the GM says otherwise, if you describe what you do and it makes sense, you have at least a chance that it succeeds.

* On the hp/gun damage scalation as a problem in high levels (or when a gun does d8 damage but a level 6 character has 6d6 hp). To keep the gunfighting a constant threat, characters should stay at relativelly small HP levels. A high level character having 18 HP seems like a sensible maximum. This goes more in line with the original Into The Odd rules. I already did something with it on the Trigun adaptation and might be useful to do it here (though I must add that, even though Trigun might share many things with the Dark Tower, it doesnt really vibe in the same world/themes or whatever, at least for me. Trigun is biopunk, here we lean more on good old magic)

* Horses, horses, horses. When I said I want to rule this as a megadungeon instead of a hexmap, I mean it. Each "area" is mapped as a series of interconnected "rooms", even if intangible. Each ·"room" is randomly generated (lair, treasure, settlement, empty, crossroads, path blocked, etc) and the rules for movement mirror those used in dungeons, but the movement used is instead: Horse (Sprint), Horse (March) and Walk. This makes each exploration turn takes more in-game time, so things that depend on time, like healing, take more time. And that feels nice. I should also be learning more things about horses, because I'm a city guy. I think that horse tending and behavior is a largelly ignored aspect in both fantasy and western settings; as well as horses themselves. Which is weird because their imagery is so powerful that a almost any character on a horse looks automatically like an adventurer.

The Dark Tower: A Rant

This post is about the Dark Tower books by Stephen King. Probably won't make much sense if you haven't read them before. 

I read the saga somewhere around the change of century, when only four of the seven books were written. I was really on fire with that shit, like fucking mad. I remember reading this old web for theories (god, I found it! so many memories!) on the old age of internet, and thinking about the tower all day at home, high school...

I eventually read the last three and I didn't like them much. Not just the ending, but the whole three novels feel much different than the rest, and I think most readers might agree with me. I will try to explain what I feel by saying this: While the first four feel (as Stephen King says they were) channelled more than written, as if a voice related to the tower itself was telling him when and what to write, at intervals, during thirty years; the last three feel like written analitically and in a rush, trying to make sense of what he had been writing "in a trance" up to that day. There are many other things that can be blamed for this, I guess (Self inserting as a character, devaluating Roland's world by inserting a Keystone World set in our era, trying to build a Stephen King expanded universe, lots of epic build-ups wasted like Flagg, Crimson King, Patrick Danville, Eyes of the Dragon crossover, etc) but I think the reason I cited is the most overlooked, and maybe the reason for all the rest. 

In a way, I feel that the setting became sort of "spoiled" and that the only way to enjoy them is to "forget" the newer books, as if they didn't exist. Sometimes I think about how cool it would be, after I saw the entries about "1937 hobbit as a setting" and the "What if Star Wars episode IV was the only Star Wars movie", and I go even deeper: What would happen if only Roland's youth scenes were the story?

And by this, I mean all the collected flashbacks: Cuthbert and Roland at the hanging of Hax the Cook, the manhood test with Cort, the whole Mejis arc, the whole Wind through the Keyhole (alongside the fairytale on it!) and the spare comments of Roland all across the books: "I once saw a man called Flagg turning a man into a dog". Cutting down all the obvious ties with the real world and New York, and focusing on the ripe lore of the Mid-World. I think it would almost stand on its own as a good story: it has enough foreshadowing for the readers to picture the fall of Gilead and the final confrontation at the Dark Tower, without the needing of showing beyond that or more detailed narration. I only need to know things like that Roland and Cuthbert shot Alain by mistake at the battle of Jericho, and that something happened around the horn of Eld, whatever. Someday the Gunslinger will head to the tower, and thats all; everything ends after the Wind Through The Keyhole confrontation with the skinchanger, and Gabrielle's Deschain revelation. Sort of a weird sudden ending like the one the very Stephen King already did in Colorado Kid, but it works in my mind.

But this is a blog about RPGs! I should focus this imaginings to more practical purposes: How would The Dark Tower, Flashbacks Only work as a gamist setting? Well, at first glance, much better than the original one:

You got the epic struggle between the barony of order, descendant from Arthur of Eld, and in ultimate stance some sort of paladins of the White, versus the forces of chaos, incarnated on the more tangible threat of John Farson's rebellion, the deceptions and schemes of the evil sorcerer called Marten/The Covenant Man, and then, behind them, the Crimson King whom all of them seem to serve in some way. The Dark Tower's nature is not really ever explained (I guess that thinking about it is GM's job), but the journey towards it is a great gaming quest. The PCs are, of course, Gunslingers, either formed or in training; with duties and powers similar to Jedis with guns; but with status more akin to medieval knights. I'd like to make an entry soon detailing ideas for a setting inspired by this. But I realized that doing that would require from myself to explain possible readers and even maybe myself certain things, and that this rant would require certainly more than a paragraph: hence this whole entry.

To close this, I'd like to unfold an idea I'm holding this days. When I was reminded of the Tower this last time, I felt the urge of reading the fourth book: Wizard and Glass, that I had not read in a long time, maybe almost 20 years (I remember reading that book while on detention class at high school!). Reading it now, with my (adult? father's?) current eyes, I felt some heavy themes underlying on the book; maybe even the central core of it. I won't argument much as I don't want to persuade anyone, just state them the best I can:

The first one is the relationship of Roland and his parents. Their mutual treason and conflict represents in a minor scale the breakup of civilization that would come in the Mid-World. The chaos forces who tainted Gabrielle do the same into the world's bastion, Gilead, of which Steven Deschain is a personification. The impact on the mid-world is devastating, just as the treason was in Roland's heart. Both happenings are an allegory of each other, and lead to each other. The initial state is never to be repaired, but instead it becomes even harder and harder to even remember correctly as a faded picture. It calls for restoration through a desperate quest, which is once again sent by Roland's father: The Dark Tower was though to be a myth by young gunslingers, and most of the mid-world, but at the end of DT4 Roland points out something like "Our father's know otherwise, as is the secret they keep, I'm sure of it". It is by stepping in the shoes of his idealized father that he attempts to fix a the situation, and it is only by carrying his guns and mimicking his father's determination, overriding to extremes the joyful heart he inherited from his mother (That he could rise above [his divided nature] and willingly embrace the insanity of romance was a gift from his mother. All else in his nature was humorless... -DT4)  that he intends to do it. If anyone of you is familiarized with the tarot, you might picture clearly the Emperor vibes here.

This is more or less how I always pictured Roland's dad. 

I usually disregard descriptions and go along with what my 

subconscious gives me

The second one is the will to explore the world as we watched it when we were kids, as opposed as the one we live in today. Scientists might say its the same planet and everything, but they are just deluding themselves. 

There was a world before, one we put together where everything was at the same time very ancient, older than time itself; and at the same time, very new and with an infinite future bursting out of its thin skin. A world that was infinitelly vast and at the same time very simple to comprehend; in which laws are obvious and natural. With the years, we forget this world and put together a new one; deeming the other one as childish and false. We have formed a new worldview that fits our life better, but, to which degree is it more real than the other? We might argue that we have more life experience, yes, but, while we have lots of what we believe it is world knowledge, we also have a lot of limiting scars, fears and frustrations which (who knows?) maybe they take our eyes out ot the paths, instead of showing us them. And in any case, the former world is equally real in its way, and still calls you to be explored in search of the hidden treasures you left there unchecked. 

This world is represented in the saga at least in a triple way: the way that Eddie, Susannah and Jake perceive the Mid-World (I think it was Jake who thought somewhere in The Waste Lands: "this world is really dangerous, yes, but is much more real"). The way in which Roland remembers Gilead; and the way the world, including the nostalgic/magical New York, is presented to us, readers.

And now that this personal short analysis is done, I will focus the next post on something related but more practical: Ideas for a game/setting that takes the good parts of the Dark Tower; preferably the ones that make it really magical. As opposed that "Oh, its a western ambiented game, we should use a poker deck to randomize it, so cooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool"

A spell list of pokemon moves

 

One of my long carried over projects is to make a game or D&D adaptation whose entire spell list is taken from pokemon. Basically to take the list of Gen 1 - pokèmon moves (back from when there were 151 of them) and rework them into spells. 

Many of them are explicit on their effects (flamethrower). Some of them might require some explanation, and some of them, which are redundant (Thunder, thunder punch, thunder shock, thunder wave and thunderbolt), can be reworked into more interesting things, so they are the place in which I can get creative with non-combat effects (for example, thunder wave might be used to magnetically seal a gate or whatever)

The great thing about this is that it feels a really new start, not based in the D&D list, to make magic fresher and personal. At the same time it has some constraints that, far from being adverse, are always the greatest helpers when building something great.

Interestingly, it allows for a very elemental-esque approach to magic, with all spells having someone that is vulnerable or resistant to it. One can make monsters based on elements, or trying to figure out to which pokemon element do D&D monsters belong. 

PC casters should not be elemental per se (they are treated like type: normal unless belonging to a specific race, like merfolk or harpies) though they can become elemental under certain circumstances (some spells or items, maybe?). Another good way to "pokemonize" this casters is to allow them to learn only moves of 2 different types, (beyond type:normal). Maybe monks can also work this way, by learning moves of type:fighting.

In the list I linked the moves are labeled as physical (causes physical damage) status (causes status alters, might be sort of magical) or special (more magical in nature). This and the movement type are to be respected a priori, though I might change my mind.

 

I find it very interesting that in the pokemon games there were no Dark and Holy types (though they added Dark shortly afterwards). This sort of paints the world as having no definite law and chaos, just a very strange and wild nature. Also there are oddly specific types like bug, ghost and three types of earth related elements (plant, ground and rock; with steel being added in the later generations). So there is no way to play a cleric in the usual version we know about. If we count them as being "those who drive ghosts away", a quick glance at the chart shows us that only other ghosts are super effective VS ghosts :/

Which element do you feel that a healing spell would belong to?
Which types would you grant to a medusa?

magic system sketch

Following the guidelines of previous entries, I'm devising some possibilities to simple and cool magic systems.

I want magic progression to follow a 4-step, exponential structure; from non-magical, to initiate, mage and archmage (and diminishing gains after that if any). 

Magic, then, is cast from a list of spells that increase in number on every "magical grade", but also in power.

What I have for now is this:

Initiates roll 1d6 when casting spells

Mages roll 2d6

Archmages roll 3d6

and spells have three parameters to be measured:

Impact (how many hp you heal, damage you do, effect you cause, etc)

Range (how many people it affects)

Retain (decides if the spell is retained after use or not)

As I want that there are mechanical benefits to casters to disregard armor, I made it so wearing armor or other encumbrances decreases the chance to retain spells: you must roll your movement rate or under to keep the spell.

Sample movement rates:

No armor=2

Light armor=1

Heavy armor=0

Initiates roll 1d6 to cast magic. So when an initiate rolls a heal spell, the result defines all parameters; but one from impact or range is defaulted to 1:

Lets say he rolls a 4: he can choose to heal a target 4 hit points, or heal 1 hit point to up to four targets. As he rolled over its movement rate (no armor=2), the spell is lost.

Mages roll 2d6 to cast magic. They can allocate the results anywhere they see fit from Impact, Range or Retain. A parameter which has no results is defaulted to 1, and if its Retain, its automatically lost.

Mage in no armor rolls a 4 and a 2 when healing: He can choose, for example, to heal 4 points to a target and keep the spell (2 is equal to his movement rate); or maybe he can heal 2 points to 4 targets and lose the spell.

Archmages roll 3d6 to cast magic. They are, of course, benefited from allocating low rolls on Retain and high rolls on effect. 

Archmage in light armor casts heal and rolls 3, 3 and 1. He heals three points to three different targets, and as he keeps the spell, he can attempt it again next turn.

Now the base is established, lets get to the fun spare bits:

* Some spells make no sense in having a numerical score for Impact, but they can be described differently depending on the result assigned to it (from an 1 to 6 score, how much does "Magical Light" shine into the cave?). On others, where the result is a matter of yes or no (charm, sleep, maybe) the Impact roll can measure the number of turns affected, being a threshold that you must reach for the spell having an effect (like in "sleep needs a 3 at least to kick in") or just having the spell work straight, and making it more a matter on "how many people you sleep" (effectivelly putting the weight on the Range score)

* Mages and Archmages revert to 1d6 lower if they are for any reason deprived from their magical wands (I'm a great fan of Earthsea novels)

* Spells can be learned multiple times. This is the way in which a forest nymph (Initiate level) would cast Entangling vines many times before retreating.

* Things that complicate this structure further must be treated on a case by case basis, described on the specific spell description.

* Casters can attempt to cast spells reactivelly: when they are attacked, they can attempt to cast a spell before the attack takes place. This is done by casting normally, and if the Retain is successful, the spell is cast before the attack. If the Retain is lost, the spell takes effect after the attack (if the mage is still alive and any other conditions allow it). In any outcome, this consumes the casters' turn.

*It is weird that mages can only cast spells on groups of 6, no matter their power, huh? To fix that, having a range of 6 means you cast the spell on all the group you select (all foes, all allies, everyone but a single person... its your call)

Gameifying Alignment

I was reading the book of Pits and Perils when something inspired me (it happens a lot with that book). Right above the yellow marker:

"A knight is just a lawful fighter". It came into my mind that a cleric is just a lawful magic user too. And in a way, seeing mages as good and evil clerics makes sense if you imagine it in, for example, Lord of the Rings: Gandalf (and every elf too) feels more a cleric to me than anything else. I feel that anything he does is a version of Light, Bless and Turn; while Sauron and Saruman are tainted with evil and that is why their magic feels "different". I don't know where its the key difference. I heard somewhere that elven magic creates, while the shadow magic cannot create and only corrupts. I leave here this article to further reading when I have some time.

Then I started to think deeper into the alignments: How they are always just ignored (I never payed them any attention myself), and I think that it is because A: they have no mechanical weight beyond certain magic weapon restrictions, so why bother? and B: they are metaphysically complex. After all, in real life is hard to define or tell good from evil sometimes.

But inside a game's rules, we can simplify them enough to make them work and make them mean something. These are some guidelines I've come up with:

* There are three alignments: Lawful / Neutral / Chaotic; which are just another words for Good / Neutral / Evil. Lawful is because it follows "god's" law, or whatever benign force you picture. Chaotic is for vampires, undead, demons, etc; but also any corrupted or tainted person, object, race, etc.

* There are no clerics. Instead, a lawful fighter is a Paladin, and a lawful Magic User is a Cleric, as we know them. I dont know what to call lawful thieves, hobbits, elves, etc; but I assure you they exist.

* Mages can only take spells from the MU list or their aligment list (cleric for lawful mages or reversed clerical spells for Chaotic mages). This makes neutral MUs the boring, academic guys who actually have less spell choices.

* Any lawful character can attempt to turn undead. Holy symbols give a bonus to that, or even allow the action to neutral characters (though neutral characters doing that count as level 1 for turning purposes)

* As being Lawful has an upside, it must have a cost or every character would pick it as an alignment. My best idea is that being lawful makes you start with 1/3 of the money (because you're so selfless, bro). Maybe even you have to give some XP money to charity to level up.

* Being Lawful its a status to be kept. It is weird and awkward to have a Judge GM telling you that you are "behaving bad" on a grey area and taking your alignment from you. I don't know if that is a thing that happens. But there must be ways to become a neutral or even evil in-game. I'll think later about this.

* Being Lawful is something you can become mid-game. I think that a good way could be to have it as a prize: remember all those Lawful monsters on the list, that don't seem to have a use? Well, on a good reaction roll, they will give you missions, related to god's will, cosmic struggle or maybe some humble thing (how does it fit on the lawful plan is up to you to imagine). If you succeed on it, you have a chance to become lawful, possibly based off charisma or wisdom to see if it "opens your eyes" or "converts yourself" to the good side. Rescuing princesses, killing evil monsters, recovering lost scions, restoring hopes: that is what lawful guys do.

* Evil characters can happen too, but they are subject to be specially affected by lawful monsters. Apart from evil spells, maybe they could have some area effect of fear, darkness... who knows, maybe at high levels. This is to be decided later. Chaotic thieves are assassins, while chaotic mages represent warlocks and witches.

* Alignment adds + or - 2 to reaction rolls if faced with the same or opposed alignment (neutral characters do not benefit from this)

* The list of things affected by alignment does not end here: magic weapons restricted to alignment, alignment languages, aligned places, groves, rivers, havens, etc. I am starting to think that understanding and exploiting alignments is one of the most powerful keys of the fantasy genre.

was this a case of clerical turning induced by magic object?

Katanagatari

* This is a list of gameable things that I took by watching Katanagatari.

1 - An island inhabited by a powerful fighter and his family; as he was abandoned there by his lord.

2 - A land that its been completely overrun by a desert, from which only the top of a castle remains. The castle is a dungeon with the entry on the top.

3 - A swordsman who, from a non-threatening sitting position, can unleash an speed of light attack; but only if you step 1 milimeter into the room he is in.

4 - The concept of a tactician that cannot combat, but instead watches you fight and comes up with the best approach to any duel or battle.

5 - A four handed automat/puppet, with a sword in each hand, and another one hidden in the mouth; that is powered by solar energy (basking in the sun for a while during the daily routine) and is also shaped after the author's loved woman.

6 - A group of ninjas who are gorgeously cosplayed as an animal each. Seriously I really want to use this one.

7 - An interesting reason for being a monk in-game (because you are a human sword, so you cannot use swords)

8 - A bunch of poisoned (read as cursed) weapons with diverse powerups. Then, a wooden sword whose ability is make you feel righteous, and a bladeless sword that makes you overanalyze yourself to the point to "cut" you.

Houhou sama! I really liked that character for some reason. The series themselves are 12 episodes of awesome anime of the 2000s era. I reccomend it to all the old school anime fans like me.

Charm, Sleep, Fear, Confusion

Writing some spell lists, I've come to think about D&D's mind-altering spells in particular. Charm, Sleep, Fear, Confusion. 

They all have the potential to be encounter-skippers. Then, why choose one over the other? 

In the rules the differences are subtle: Charm might give you a temporary ally, so does Confusion by making an enemy so confuse that attacks itself or its allies. Sleep might affect more enemies. Fear makes the target flee, carrying away all treasure they might hold.

But in practice, rules as written, they speak more about how the enemies act than on how they do feel. For example: by casting fear, an NPC will never react to fear by trying desperately to befriend you, like in a charm spell (so you spare his life) or channel the fear attacking, but awkwardly, like in a confusion spell. RAW, they will always flee. So the spell effect is not as much about what does the target feel, its more about what they physically do.

So, a wizard learning Fear in wizard school, dreaming of the day in which he will subdue armies at his feet using magical fear, will be dissapointed because fear will only send them fleeing from him,

I'm thinking on having all those spells somehow mixed in one. Lets call it "Ensorcell".

When you cast it, you change the reaction of target NPC 2 steps up or down the Reaction Table. That is the effect. It's the GM who, depending on the reaction and the situation, describes which is the magical effect who caused it. Lets say that the Reaction Table its like:

A goblin who is attacking you (Immediate Attack) would be hold for some turns (confused). The GM says if its because of fear, daze, tiresomeness or maybe he is tripping balls.

A hostile one (roll of 3-5) would retire its attack completely. Maybe he is asleep or just lost his will to fight. He might not get in love with you, but will be opened to negociation.

If the monster is undecided (6-8), then you have the chance to make it your pal/waifu, as a classic Charm spell.

Possibly you can increase the power of this spell somehow, to make an Immediate Attack become an Enthusiastic Friendship by casting it twice or whatever. 

Now, I can imagine the same wizard in wizard school, memorizing lots of different theorems and tricks to be capable to ensorcell enemies someday, and adapt his spells no matter the situation. 

The bad part of this approach is that, when cast on PCs, it lacks guidelines on what should happen. The GM should interpret it based on the shown attittude of the PC towards the caster and interpret it as it was a reaction roll.

Monsters that normally cast effects on PCs, such as sirens or vampires, still work normally casting Charm or Fear, and should affect PCs just as they do in classic rules, no matter what is their attitude. They are monsters after all and work outside the PC's rules.