Proof! - Watched from the woods...

I thought for this instalment of the adventure I would include more of my workings. More of whats going on in my mind with regard to the questions I ask and how I interpret them. Also more of the dice rolling, and how their results influence the outcomes.

At Wood Manor: The next morning.

The trio wakes and begins searching the exterior of the Manor and the grounds for any further clues.

I review the characters abilities;

Margaret Hill
Retired professor / Middle school history teacher Defining Trait / Narrow Trait [+3], Local history buff: Massachusetts Narrow Trait [+3], Good eye for detail Broad Trait [+1], Keen intuition Broad Trait [+1].

Leonard Wixom
Idle Rich Dilettante Broad Trait [+1], Thrill Seeker Defining Trait / Broad Trait [+1], Family Owns Half of Massachusetts Broad Trait [+1], Worldly Broad Trait [+1]

Deborah Wood
College Student: History Broad Trait [+1], Unknown but Talented Artist Narrow Trait [+3], Socialite Broad Trait [+1], YachtswomenNarrow Trait [+3]

I decide which Skills / Traits are appropriate for the search.

Margaret has a Good Eye for Detail, and Keen Intuition, the usefulness of these are pretty self evident in searching and investigating.

Leonard has Worldly, he has seen and done and seen a thing or two in his time, probably some quite shady stuff. So he may have useful input and insight into situations involving kidnapping.

Deborah is more difficult. I decide to let her use Socialite, much in the same way as Leonard's use for Worldly, but with a slight penalty as I feel it is a more limited form of worldliness.

So working with the Swords of Strange Aeons [SOSA] component I roll for their search.

Margaret:  Good eye for detail - Skill Die 3+1 / Difficulty Die 6, Keen Intuition - Skill Die 4+1 / Difficulty Die 2.

Leonard: Worldly -  Skill Die 5+1 / Difficulty Die 6.

Deborah: Socialite Skill Die 2+1-2 / Difficulty Die 1.

Margaret's intuition kicks in during the search with a result of 5 Vs 2. The difficulty die is beaten by three points. Not bad.

Both Leonard and Deborah have limited success by matching their skill roll to the difficulty die result.

Interpretation: The three friends have a light breakfast of coffee and toast, and discuss the details and possibilities that have emerged after finding that the manor had been cleaned in great detail. They find it hard to believe that a man who spends most of his time in his head like Charles would decide to give the house a good going over before disappearing.

They emerge from the manor, the sun rising slow and hot above the calm sea, its rays slanting across the yard. Dew still clings to the grass and the air is eerily still. The sun continues to climb into the sky as they search, from time to time someone passes by on foot walking towards town. They are all dressed in drab tough work clothes worn to a mottled grey.

They pass by, heads down, without any interest in the trio and what they are doing. Occasionally one does look up with a quick suspicious, or was it nervous, glance.

After a couple of hours searching they are ready to give up, no further evidence has turned up and they are sure that something bad happened to Charles, and had then been covered up.

Margaret takes one last look at the front of the manor, it's veranda, and the decorative slats concealing the supports underneath. It is then she imagines that a hurried or sloppy clean up may have missed anything that had slid through the widely space boards.

Leonard, reluctantly, volunteers to crawl under  and in short time finds the congealed blood under the boards directly in front of the door.

Someone, probably Charles, had been hurt, badly. Their suspicions confirmed, the heartsick group begin to see the realities of the hard task before them.

Charles is in trouble.

Someone has covered it up.

The police are uncooperative.

The people in town, including their officials are hostile.

All of this, combined with the dark history of Rockport shakes their collective resolve.

They stand in the long grass, the dew of the morning now gone. Deborah openly weeps, Leonard consoles her with wet eyes, whilst Margaret eyes their surroundings. As Margaret's gaze drifts to the Town that hugs the shore of the bay below, her eyes rest upon the large complex of the cannery.

She turns to Deb and Leo and says, "I think we need to take a look at that cannery."

NPC's:

With the Mythic GM component of the rules I am using I ask a few questions that will frame the activities of the NPC's.

First up I believe that the detective that followed them form the station the day before would want to keep tabs on them.

I ask, "Is detective Henry Jones watching the group as they search the outside of the Manor?" 

Deciding that is it LIKELY that he is I look at the Fate Chart and see for the current Chaos Rank of 8 the indicators are 19-95-100.

So 19 and below I would get an EXCEPTIONAL YES. For 20 to 95 a YES, and for 96 to 100 an EXCEPTIONAL NO.

I roll 76. YES Henry Jones is watching them.

Now I ask "Do the group notice him watching them?"

Deciding that,although they did notice someone following them yesterday evening and they are rightly suspicious of the towns people, they are so engrossed in their search that they are unlikely to notice the detective watching them form his concealed position.

Looking at the chart I see, 18-75-96. They still have an alarmingly high chance of spotting him. As the situation in Rockport becomes more chaotic loss of control becomes an ever more likely occurrence for the characters and the NPC's!

I roll 100! An EXCEPTIONAL NO. They are oblivious to his presence. Because this was an exceptional no, he also over hears Margaret mention checking out the cannery.

Now I need to know how deep Henry's involvement with the going s on in Rockport are.

I ask, "Is Henry Jones involved with the Rockport conspiracy?"

This seems LIKELY, he is a high ranking police officer and the power players in town seem to have some involvement and influence.

The chart lists 19-95-100. I roll 01!

He is in the thick of it. The idea that he is the son of the mayor and it is his founding, and very influential, family that run things in Rockport jumps into my mind.

So now the lead conspirators know their suspicions regarding Charles. They know that the cover up was unsuccessful, and they know what the groups next step will be.

Henry Jones definitely does not want them to find out what is going on at the cannery.

---

I hope you find this interesting.

I hope that other solo players using Mythic GM Emulator find this helpful and useful.

See you next time when John Morgan meets "The Foreman".

Sidetracked ! - Playing with rules. Making a game.

Apologies to anyone following the goings on in Rockport.

For the past week and a bit I have been distracted by an old labour of love.

I have been playing around with mechanics, rules, and settings since my early teens. Soon after discovering role playing, which super charged my already vivid imagination, I began to tinker with the rules I read and worked on my own legends, lore, and worlds.

I have half penned many different rules, bare bones and complex, in the decades since then. I experimented with d100 based stuff first of all, then had my stint of mucking around with the d20 systems. I have tired playing cards, coins, tarot cards, and narrative word game style conflict resolution.

They all sit in draws and on drives in various states of completion / abandonment.

So recently I dug up and read a d6 based game I started working on in 2011. It's very much in the old school vein. It's name is very bad, a 'Dad Joke' of the highest order, but it will not change.  What I had was only a few pages of very rough ideas and rules, but that was enough for the bug to bite me again.

A few pages have grown to twenty, and today my first rough for a character sheet happened.

I want to create the game I imagined when first reading the rules for Red Box  Dungeons and Dragons in my first year in high school back in 1984. The game and the friends I have made through it really changed my life.

The second premise, rules that only use six sided dice. Everyone can find some d6!

In this game I wanted all of the characters to become a stronger version of their core concept. As they level up Fighters become more fightier, Elves more Elfy, and so on. One of the things that disappointed me as I came to grips with the Red Box version of DnD was the blandness of the Demihuman characters as they grew more experienced. Even the Human core classes left a little to be desired.

Don't get me wrong though, I loved every minute of the game I played!

So now I get to write the rules, I have set out to give each of the Old School concepts for player characters their own flavour and flare. As they level their essence strengthens and this leads to a more concentrated and powerful archetype.

Play testing will show me how balanced they are, but to be honest balance not my goal. I am flying by the seat of my pants fuelled by the rule of cool.  Thirteen year old me and my mates did not care, or even think about game balance. Fun, imagination and junk food were first and foremost in our minds.

Junk food may be of the table for 46 year old me, but fun and imagination are not :)

Anyway, enough rambling, if you're waiting on an update for my Horror Solo adventure it will be along soon.

For the time being here are a few bits and bobs of my recent work for you to have a look at.

If you would like to know more leave me a message and I can post some more details or maybe even send you a draft of the rules when I have enough written.

Always happy to talk games and game design with anyone :)

This is an early draft for a character sheet, I am going with hand draw all the way.

Printers and photocopiers were almost unheard of where I lived back then, and expensive if you could access them. I don't know about you, but pocket money was a rare privilege, so we did it all by hand most of the time.

It was all theatre of the mind back then:)

Below an early version of the Halfling Demihuman class;

Halfling

- Innate magical resistance: x2 Wits versus direct magical effects.

- Nimble: + 1d Moves versus area effect damage.

- Fey sight: Can see well in all light levels, blind in darkness.

- Overlooked: Enemies will underestimate you and target allies first.

- Sturdy: + 1d Brawn versus poison, disease, and environmental hazards.

- Small: cannot use heavy armour and weapons

- Stout: -1d [10 meters] movement.

Traits: Moves>Brawn>Wits

Halflings may choose 3 Moves skills, 2 Brawn skills, and one Wits skill at first level.

See the skill list and skill descriptions on page xx in the Skills section.

Level Progression

Level	Xp Required	Benefit
1	0	As per character creation guide. Max 1d6 Turning Points.
2	250	+ 1 Skill. Second Breakfast.
3	500	+ 1 Trait Die. Magic Resistance.
4	1000	Max 2d6 Turning Points.
5	2000	+ 1 Skill. A Hearty Meal.
6	4000	+ 1 Trait Die. Underfoot.
7	8000	Max 3d6 Turning Points.
8	16000	+ 1 Skill. Hardy.
9	32000	+ 1 Trait Die. Lucky.
10	64000	Max 4d6 Turning Points.
11	128000	+ 1 Skill. Sure Shot.
12	256000	+ 1 Trait Die. Artful Dodge.

Second Breakfast: Somewhere, somehow a halfling can always clobber together enough food to feed every one. 1 / day you can find enough food to feed everyone in your party.

Magic Resistance: + 1 Die to Wits saves versus Direct magic.

A Hearty Meal: No matter where, no mater when, a halfling can always make a nice comfy nourishing meal to remind every one of home and better times. Once per day you can cook up a delicious and restoring meal that satisfies hunger and restores 1d6 Hit points. It also refreshes Wits Dice depleted due to spell casting.

Underfoot: Being small and quick on your feet you can get in under large creatures guard. You may use 2 x you Moves dice when fighting or dodging creatures of large or greater size.

Hardy: Healthy country upbringing has made you from sterner stuff. You get + 1 Dies to Brawn saves versus poison, disease, environmental effects.

Lucky: The little people are favoured by fate. Haflings receive 2 x the amount of Turning Points.

Sure Shot: Long practice and strong short arms mean that you now lower the difficulty of ranged attacks by one level.

Artful Dodge: Adventuring and its hazards have quickened your reflexes and sharpened your mind, you may now take a dodge action as well as any other action every round.

Give us a yell if you are interested.

Cheers,

Don

What's going on at the Old Quarry?

Despite the warnings from his allies, and the evidence of his own senses, John decides to head out and investigate the situation in town further.

 Most of the activity in the sleepy seaside burg seems focused around the docks and the cannery. Not surprising he thought, considering that fishing was the main source of employment and profit here. Though with the rumours of depleted fish stocks in the surrounding seas and no boats out in the bay, the constant workings of the cannery seemed unusual.

Where were all the fish coming from?

The other odd thing he noted were the to-ings and fro-ings at the old quarry. Rockport derived its name form the natural granite deposits in the hills just outside of town. In it's heyday the much prized stone was exported all around the east coast of America and beyond. All of the impressive old town buildings were made of the stuff.

But those days were a long time gone. Only the fishing and the cannery kept Rockport alive today.

John decided to go up to the quarry. His reporters instincts were telling him he would find some of his answers there.

...

On the long walk back Margaret tells her companions what she remembers about Rockport and its history, including the local legends and strange happenings that have circulated through out the local region. 

A news paper clipping framed on the wall in the police station in particular reminded her of the many disappearances over the centuries this land had been settled by immigrants, and vague myths and rumours about the first peoples that lived here before them. The seas around Rockport were fertile grounds for fishing, but from time to time the stocks seemed to deplete and then mysteriously replenish.

These hard times for the town seemed to coincide with disappearances, and those who did go missing were almost always visitors or the newly settled, as in Charles's case. This did not buoy Deborah's hopes in finding her farther.

They return to wood manor and have a good look around before unpacking. It was well past sundown when they begin in earnest, so the exterior of the building would have to wait till tomorrow.

The trio find nothing, absolutely nothing. This in itself they decide is a clue. The pristine condition of the manor is unlike her fathers normal habit, he is a distracted intellectual who spends most of his time in his head or at the canvas. The house would normally be unkempt and dusty, the kitchen a mess. Some one had given the place a good going over.

Strange hands had been at work in this house after her farther had gone missing.

Try as they might no other clues became apparent. Until that is, Leonard decided to play one of his mind games. He called this one "If I had kidnapped Deb's farther, how would I have covered it up?"

It was then that he noticed fresh paint on the front door, and recently re-polished floor boards surrounding it.

...

John walked a ways off the old road to the quarry. Far enough he hoped that he would avoid notice from the odd truck driving to and form the town and any passersby on their way to the old stone works.

Skirting the edge of the great excavation, he soon found a good vantage point. From high up at the rear side of the old granite rock face he observed men loading the trucks with what looked like large wooden produce crates they carried from a cave mouth in the older part of the work site. It looked as if it were the edge of some chamber that once would have been buried deep in the stone and had been uncovered due to the excavation of the ancient green granite.

As the day wore on more trucks arrived and were loaded with a seeming unending supply of these large wooden crates.

I needed to get a look inside that cave.

John settled into he long grass to wait.

The only sign of the men creeping up on him was the blinding pain as the truncheon connected with the back of his skull and the voice of one of them muttering,

"The Foreman will want to talk to him."

Then the darkness and pain claimed him.

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Just to keep you up to date on the workings behind the scenes and where the heck I get all this from.

Here is the Adventure tracking sheet updated for the scenes of the adventure related above.

The story above included Scenes 4 and 5 on the tracking sheet. The Chaos factor has risen to 8, mostly due to John's activities and calamities.

The others need to have a word to John for making their lives more interesting, and complicating the situation in Rockport :P

See you next time...