Difference between revisions of "Macchiato Monsters: The Stygian Library"

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==Rules==
 
==Rules==
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===How Do You Play This Game?===
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Usually, just describe what you're doing. When your character is in danger, or attempts something risky, roll dice.
 +
 +
When you roll dice, you roll 1d20 against one of your stats. You succeed when you roll equal or under the stat. 1 is a critical success, usually doubling the effect. 20 is a critical fail, usually bringing in a consequence or side effect.
 +
 +
When you have advantage on a roll, roll twice and keep the best result for the situation. When you have disadvantage, roll twice and keep the worst result.
 +
 +
Things denoted ΔX are Risk Dice. Δ8 is a d8, Δ4 is a d4. These represent diminishing resources where the exact number left isn't important, or escalating danger more broadly and abstractly. When you roll 1-3 on a Risk Die, it steps down to the next lowest die size. The maximum is Δ12, down to Δ4, and then fizzling out to nothing. Sometimes the number rolled on a Risk Die matters, like for how much damage your armor can absorb in this fight. Other times, like for how many torches you have left, you're just rolling to see whether it steps down or not. Players roll their own Risk Dice when it's necessary; the DM will say when you should roll your ammunition or your torchbearer's morale.
 +
 
===Languages===
 
===Languages===
 
We're going to use real world languages mostly, and we'll default to English in this setting. Spanish and ASL are good bets in Kansas Silly, too. Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, or other classical written languages would be useful in the Library - any written language, really. He's surely learned the setting-specific Parametric Language, a genteel cant used by authentic wizards and other distinguished arcane persons to exchange pleasantries, make small talk, and discuss magical subjects - great for making a good impression on people who can cast fireball, and talking to them privately.  
 
We're going to use real world languages mostly, and we'll default to English in this setting. Spanish and ASL are good bets in Kansas Silly, too. Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, or other classical written languages would be useful in the Library - any written language, really. He's surely learned the setting-specific Parametric Language, a genteel cant used by authentic wizards and other distinguished arcane persons to exchange pleasantries, make small talk, and discuss magical subjects - great for making a good impression on people who can cast fireball, and talking to them privately.  

Revision as of 00:44, 19 September 2020

This is the wiki page for a Macchiato Monsters game centered on the module The Stygian Library.

Recruitment

Characters

Character Sheet Template

Setting

Kansas Silly

Kansas Silly, Misery had a real shot at being a no-kidding big city, like sprawling Vulture out in the desert or stately Esperanza up in the mountains, or even (in the wildest dreams of the city fathers) coastal Empire itself. They had the rail connections, the stockyards, the avant-garde arts culture and electric-lit amusement park, the first and best trolley network in the country. Legally renaming the city seems like a mistake now, especially with all the curses that have befallen it since, but if they'd won the bidding process, that international university of the circus arts would've put Kansas Silly on the map! (Barnstone Academy ended up in Esperanza instead.)

Kansas Silly as a whole is not strongly aligned with law, chaos, good, or evil. The city culture values personal advancement and a sense of fate: some people and places are meant to prosper and flourish, while others aren't. Three significant districts:

  • Heartland Hills, northwest of the city proper, full of mini-manors on quiet, leafy, brick-paved streets. Sucks money from the rest of the city through a web of tax exemptions, developer kickbacks, and annexations. Where the good schools, libraries, and malls are. More and more residents are in thrall to an esoteric multi-level investment scheme-slash-cult known as the Invisible Bridge, which appeals to those who want to change their fate and ultimately, at the innermost levels of initiation, "go Diamond."
  • Sanctuary Park, north of the river, best known for Introspection Tower, the city's memorial to the Homeland War. Civic and religious institutions surround it, most of them not well-funded, with a more humble clown community college and regular carnival on the mildly haunted grounds of the old amusement park. The best place to get international groceries. More than one sorcerer has been initiated by the wisdom and bite of the giant bat hanging in the old municipal roost; some are upright, some are wicked.
  • Southport, south of the river, where a few commercial trains still come through Union Station and long-haul shipping keeps the warehouses and silos running. Apartment blocks, call centers, fast food, cracked sidewalks, parks with little angular fountains. A good place to get a convenience store hot dog and neon soda and hang out at the skate park until your ride gets off work. Masked professional wrestling is big right now; the hometown favorite is Spectacle Devil, who has a complicated gimmick involving evil twins and a mirror dimension.

Many people are wearing protective masks outside because of the dust storms in Misery this season, often decorated with jaws or smiles or meaningful patterns. Public transit via electric trolley is inexpensive but harder than driving. People who can cast magic, or want to seem like they can, usually adopt a shadow name to avoid contaminating their personal identity with occult fallout. The factory out on the prairie that the dreadful dolls took over is slowly flooding the city with bad toys.

Rumors & Clues

Rules

How Do You Play This Game?

Usually, just describe what you're doing. When your character is in danger, or attempts something risky, roll dice.

When you roll dice, you roll 1d20 against one of your stats. You succeed when you roll equal or under the stat. 1 is a critical success, usually doubling the effect. 20 is a critical fail, usually bringing in a consequence or side effect.

When you have advantage on a roll, roll twice and keep the best result for the situation. When you have disadvantage, roll twice and keep the worst result.

Things denoted ΔX are Risk Dice. Δ8 is a d8, Δ4 is a d4. These represent diminishing resources where the exact number left isn't important, or escalating danger more broadly and abstractly. When you roll 1-3 on a Risk Die, it steps down to the next lowest die size. The maximum is Δ12, down to Δ4, and then fizzling out to nothing. Sometimes the number rolled on a Risk Die matters, like for how much damage your armor can absorb in this fight. Other times, like for how many torches you have left, you're just rolling to see whether it steps down or not. Players roll their own Risk Dice when it's necessary; the DM will say when you should roll your ammunition or your torchbearer's morale.

Languages

We're going to use real world languages mostly, and we'll default to English in this setting. Spanish and ASL are good bets in Kansas Silly, too. Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, or other classical written languages would be useful in the Library - any written language, really. He's surely learned the setting-specific Parametric Language, a genteel cant used by authentic wizards and other distinguished arcane persons to exchange pleasantries, make small talk, and discuss magical subjects - great for making a good impression on people who can cast fireball, and talking to them privately.

About Magic

How spellcasting works for this game

This amends and supersedes page 30 of Macchiato Monsters. The design goal is to reduce complexity while leaving the other systems that touch spellcasting intact.

  • If you have spells, you can cast any of your known spells at any time. There's no memorization.
  • Each spellcasting PC has one stat they use for all spellcasting: probably INT or WIS, maybe CHA. Pick one and consider what it means for your casting style. (INT suggests an arcanist studying magical effects of their own, WIS suggests channeling cosmic or divine forces, CHA suggests elevated illusions, tricks, music, or fast-talk.)
  • Casting a spell takes your full round in combat, which is spent gesturing and speaking aloud. (If you're restrained or silenced, no casting.)
  • When spells have a duration, the usual duration is a number of exploration turns (around ten minutes) equal to your level. Some spells (the description will say so) use the magician's sigil: this sigil takes one exploration turn to inscribe, and the associated spell is permanent until the magician casts it again, drawing a new sigil as the previous one fades.
  • All spells have a cost of 3 HP. The cost can instead be spent with the result of your Reagent or Faith die in part or in full. You can't spend down to 0 HP.
  • The first time you cast a spell in a situation (a scene, room, or combat,) you may roll your Reagent or Faith die (with risk of it stepping down on a 1-3 result) and note the result (for example, 4.) You can spend from that pool in spell costs for this situation before you start spending your own HP.
  • When you cast a spell...
    • If it's your first spell in this situation, first roll your Reagent or Faith die.
    • Spend the cost (3), either from your Reagent or Faith pool or your HP.
    • Roll an INT, WIS, or CHA check.
      • On a success, at or under your stat, the spell works as described. On a critical success (a 1), you don't pay the cost.
      • On a failure, the spell doesn't go off. On a critical fail (a 20), there's some mishap or danger.
      • But! If the spell fails, you may roll what MM calls the Chaos Risk Die to make something happen anyway. This is a roll on a table where most results have the spell go off with a weaker or modified effect, and a few results harm you in a hurty but not deadly way. In this game, "invoking Chaos" only works within the Library (or possibly other magical sites) and represents drawing on the exhaust of its condensed arcane power, which can be expended as the Risk Die steps down and fizzles out.

About Reagents and Faith

They function similarly, again as "armor" against spellcasting HP costs. A character can only use one or the other: either you fuel your magic with gleaming orbs and your own Nietzschean will to power, or you channel it through a higher cosmic focus and social support network.

The advantage of Reagents (whether mixed powders or thrumming scepters) is that they're impersonal: you can just get more of them if you run out, even buy them at the right market, and some have a variety of quirky side powers to spend that Risk Die on as well.

Faith involves some social context like a code of conduct and people you're responsible to, and recovering or improving the singular Faith die requires putting your time and devotion in for them. If you have a Faith die, you can roll it for a few other things in addition to spellcasting costs:

  • Roll the Δ (and risk stepping it down) to get advantage on an action in line with the faith.
  • Spend an hour in devotion/prayer/gun kata/whatever to roll the Δ and heal that many HP on yourself or amenable others.
  • If you're not wearing armor, use the Faith die as armor.

Schools of Magic

The alternative spell lists we're using have 12 schools of magic available, each with 8 spells. They can all be taken at any level, most of them scale up at higher levels. 90% of them are flavorful utility effects rather than direct HP damage (or healing), but there are some of those, too.

Here's what's in Wonder & Wickedness:

  • Diabolism summons, binds, and protects against demons.
  • Necromancy deals with death, souls, and summoning ghosts.
  • Spiritualism affects other magic in the world and turns you ethereal.
  • Elementalism manipulates rock, fire, air, and water. (It won't be very useful indoors in the Library.)
  • Psychomancy is mesmerism and mental effects, including classics like Sleep and Charm Person.
  • Translocation opens portals, recalls, and subtler spatial effects. (It has some restrictions in the Library, such as that you can't teleport directly out, but it's still useful.)
  • Vivimancy boosts and transforms living things, including people.

Marvels & Malisons adds some really fun ones:

  • Arachnomorphosis grants spider traits, and control over spiders, too.
  • Cunning Craft is a wide open grab bag of Celtic witchy effects: shillelagh, healing, wolf summoning... (It won't be as useful indoors in the Library.)
  • Apotropaism wards against magic and protects against undead/demons/spirits in a holy-flavored way.
  • Physiurgy directly heals and restores in various ways.
  • Rope Tricks animates and commands ropes. (I love all of these.)

Anyone who can cast spells also can use an effect called Maleficence, which is a little magical attack.

How death works for this game

Amends and supersedes page 28 of Macchiato Monsters.

When you hit 0 HP, roll a CON check to see if you made it. If it fails, your number's up: you've died. (Now's the time to look for one of those spells, tricks, or desperate deals that protagonist types use to bring people back from the dead - the Library's not short on them - or roll up a new character.) If it succeeds, you go back to 1 HP, regain consciousness, and can be healed further, but - you temporarily lose one advance taken at character creation or level up. The lost advance returns after a week of rest somewhere safe.

Important Posts