DRYH: Ashes of the Mad City

The last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world.

- Dan Wells

Player Character Table

Character	Played by						Fight	Flight		Coins
Character 1			3	0	0		?/?	?/?
Character 2			3	0	0		?/?	?/?
Character 3			3	0	0		?/?	?/?
Character 4			3	0	0		?/?	?/?
Character 5			3	0	0		?/?	?/?
HOPE										0
DESPAIR										0
GM	Brahnamin

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Chargen Summary can be found at the bottom of the wiki

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Game Premise

Some Nightmares exist and have form in the world only within certain limited fragments of shattered time. The Hallow King is one such Nightmare, taking form once a year in the 13th hour on her hallowed eve.

During the sacred hour of her existence, traditon demands her word is law, putting her above every Nightmare and Power until the hour's end.

No one expected the treachery she would unleash upon the worlds.

So it was, on the 31st day of the 10th month at the chiming of the 13th hour, the Hallow King rose up in the Mad City and the City Slumbering, throwing open the Ways between them in defiance of ancient edict to join the two cities in a terrible and inseperable bond.

Little Sister of Labyrinth Lane?

The Hallow King?

The clock never moved forward. The 13th hour became eternal. And the Hallow King sat her throne in a stolen body and presided over it all, drunk on the power she had leeched from Nightmare and Awake alike, and watched the worlds, caught outside of time, tear themselves down by the roots.

Each of you was Tricked by the Hallow King, and to set things right and restart the Clock, you must find a way to turn the tables on her horrific majesty.

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Rules Summary

Dice You Have to Roll

Each roll will include all your discipline, all your permanent madness, and all your current exhaustion

Additional Dice Options

Once per roll, you may increase your exhaustion by one.

Any time you roll, you may add one to six dice of temporary madness to your roll.

Reading the Dice

To determine the degree of success, count the dice that show 1, 2, or 3.

To determine the strength of a pool, find the die of that color showing the highest number(s).

If you meet or beat the GM’s degree, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail.

To determine what dominates, pick the pool with the highest strength and compare it to the GM's Pain roll.

Basic Consequences

If discipline dominates, things stay under control. You have the option to remove a response check-mark or decrease your exhaustion by one.

If exhaustion dominates, your resources are taxed. Increase exhaustion by one.

If madness dominates, things get more chaotic. Check off a response and behave accordingly.

If pain dominates, you pay a greater price. Pay a coin into the GM’s despair coffer.

If you fail to win your roll, the GM may place an additonal consequence on you beyond whatever pool Dominates.

Major Consequences

If exhaustion is increased above 6, you crash.

If you must check off a response, but can’t, you snap.

If you crash, you fall asleep, or face some other serious defeat (like death).

If you snap, you go mad for a time, clear out your responses, lose one discipline, and gain one permanent madness.

If you lose all discipline, you become a Nightmare. You’re an NPC now.

Talents

To make minor use of an exhaustion talent, your exhaustion must be at least one. On the affected roll, your minimum number of successes is equal to your current level of exhaustion.

To make major use of an exhaustion talent, you must increase your exhaustion by one, and you may add your current level of exhaustion to the roll as successes.

To make use of a madness talent, you must add one to six temporary madness dice to the roll, as determined by the GM for the potency of the effect.

Coins

The GM may spend one coin of despair to add or remove a 6 from any pool in play; the coin pays into hope. If this causes pain to dominate, no coin is paid into the despair coffer.

Any player may spend coins of hope one for one to remove exhaustion, or to remove response marks if their character is in a safe place to do so, or to add a 1 to the protagonist’s discipline pool at any time for each coin spent.

Any player may spend five minus their current discipline in coins of hope to recover one point of discipline and remove one point of permanent madness.

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Metagame Tools

Threads

IC Thread

OOC Thread

Recruiitment Thread

Resources

Orokos Online Dice Roller.

Absences Thread If you can't post for whatever reason let us know here or in OOC.

Don't Rest Your Head / RPG (PDF) You can play in this game without your own copy, but if you'd like to pick it up, the PDF is available at DriveThruRPG for $5.00 at the time of this posting.

Note: I am not affiliated with Evil Hat Productions and receive no compensation of any kind from any purchase of this product.

Don't Lose Your Mind / Madness Talents (PDF) You can play in this game without this supplement, but if you would like to pick it up, the PDF is available at DriveThruRPG for $10.00 at the time of this posting.

Note: I am not affiliated with Evil Hat Productions and receive no compensation of any kind from any purchase of this product.

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Expectations

Post Frequency

I am asking for a daily posting commitment for this game as a general rule, with less frequent posting on weekends and holidays. Meatworld being what it is, this generally averages to 3-4 GM updates per week.

Post Absences

Meatworld, amirite? You are more important than the game, so no worries when things come up, but if you will NOT be able to post, please ping us in OOC if you can so we know what is going on or post to the Absences Thread (I pretty much check that thing every time it lights up).

Post Formatting

Please use the following header in all IC posts:

Character Name | 3D | 0E | 0PM | FT 0/? | FL 0/?

• D indicates total number of discipline dice
• E indicates current number of dice in your exhaustion pool
• PM indicates permanent madness which will go up congruent with losing discipline dice
• FT indictes fight responses marked vs total
• FL indicates flight responses marked vs total

If you are addressing another PC in your post it is helpful to bold their character name as well so it stands out for them.

OOC blocks are fine for showing dice rolls and brief OOC comments directly related to a particular post. Please sblock if you need to include large blocks of text related to your IC post. All other OOC content should go in the OOC thread itself.

Dice Conventions

Please list your dice in the description line in Orokos in the order you are rolling them. ie - Discipline, Exhaustion, Madness (and how many of each you are rolling). These can be abbreviated D,E,M.

Please roll your dice in such a way that individual results are displayed, not sums, and so that each pool is distinct from the other pools.

So if you wanted to roll 3 Discipline dice, 2 Exhaustion, and 5 Madness, the description line in orokos would include the notation D3, E2, M5

The best notation I know (for orokos) for the above roll would be 3#1d6; 2#1d6; 5#1d6 (be sure to separate each pool with a semicolon [;] and a space).

Please link all dice rolls back to your dice roller.

Do not post dice rolls or actions in the OOC Thread.

PVP

I don't have much patience for GMing games that lean heavily to PVP. It is stressful for most players and tends to be extremely not fun for me.

As a general rule, intercharacter conflict and disagreement is to be expected in a game that encourages separate and even conflicting motivations from the various PCs, but when it comes to actions or expression meant to force a specific response from another player (PVP), my games default to the following:

Unilateral Permission: The other player agrees to your action. No rolls are needed. Just RP it out.

Limited Permission: The other player doesn't agree that it is an automatic thing, but does agree to let the math rocks decide.

No Permission: If the players involved do not agree to PVP, it doesn't happen. Move on with something else.

Note: When in doubt, if an action would require dice to affect an NPC it counts as PVP vs a PC and must meet one of the above conditions.

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Character Generation Summary

Choose your character's Name and a Concept that fits your character.

Answer the Five Questions to define what your character is all about.

Answer the Sixth Question that focuses on the driving conflict of this particular episode.

Questions 1-5 and 6 can be found in the Character Template link below.

Divide three points between your Fight and your Flight response. You can have three in one and none in the other or two in one and one in the other.

Choose your Exhaustion Talent - that thing that you do better than anyone else.

Choose your Madness Talent - that impossible thing you do that no one should be able to do.

When you choose your character's madness talent, frame the range of that talent based on the following breakdown of madness dice included in the roll.

1 die: indicates the most basic use of the Talent

2-3 dice: indicates a moderate use of the Talent

4-5 dice: indicates an impressive use of the Talent

6 + dice: indicates an almost godlike use of the Talent.

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You are welcome to use this Character Template or one of your own. Just be sure it links to your character's name in the table above and that I don't have to sign in anywhere to see it (I do not require editing privileges).

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