Greetings! This month I’m reflecting on playing a game a little outside my comfort zone, and sharing some initial brainstorming about a novel resolution mechanic. Let’s dive in.
Played: Through the Void
Through the Void is a minimalist OSR-inspired game from Tony Vasinda and Plus One Exp. It takes minimalism seriously: the core player-facing rules sit on a single page. It is based on a fantasy dungeon crawl game called Down We Go, but it ports the Down We Go mechanics into space and adds a dash of storygame spice. I got to check the game out because I grabbed a last-minute slot in a one-shot Tony was running.
Highlights: The most memorable moment of our session was a combat encounter. Two members of our salvage crew came upon an undead raider in spikey space armor guarding a control panel we needed to access. My character, a crusty old space whaler and captain of this scrappy set of scrappers, led the charge.
But combat, in this system, is not necessarily a wise call. The cruel whims of the d20 can render your PC a corpse floating in space after a few bad rolls. I got to roll a lot of attacks in a row thanks to a special ability that let me cycle through every weapon in my arsenal. It was a great prompt for cinematic narration, as I described my character deploying a space shotgun, harpoon gun, blaster pistol, and shockstick in short succession. Only the space shotgun actually did anything! The rest of my rolls whiffed, and the undead foe advanced on my desperate space whaler.
The other player, who had described their character as a “lovable himbo,” tried to grapple with the monster and bodily shove it out the airlock into space. The dice proved both merciful and attuned to good storytelling. That roll succeeded, and that crew member proved his worth, launching the terrible foe out into the void after all my ordinance had proved ineffective. The captain was duly impressed!
Musings: One cool piece of storygame tech that Tony included in Through the Void is the Unscene. The Unscene is a scene set elsewhere in the game’s world that players collaboratively narrate in response to prompts. It does not directly affect the story of the player characters, but it helps flesh out the world they live in. The Between from Gauntlet Publishing introduced the Unscene with vignettes set elsewhere in Victorian London that provide interesting counterpoints the nocturnal monster hunts the main characters are embarking on. In Through the Void, the Unscene is a vignette of your home space station. The opening glimpses are narrated as you depart, and the final coda is narrated as you dock back on the station post-mission (assuming some of the crew survive to make it back).
This altered Unscene structure was very intriguing! It definitely creates a different kind of pressure on the player (in this case, me) narrating the coda to the Unscene. You have to recall and cap off a sidestory that your fellow players began narrating hours ago. I enjoyed the challenge. But it got me wondering about where else an Unscene could go and how else could it be structured. It could be a fun way to check in on happenings back on Earth in a universe-hopping superhero game, for instance…
Final Thoughts: I’ll close with the testimonial I gave Tony for use in marketing the game: "Through the Void is a laser-shotgun wedding of old-school and indie design sensibilities, bundled into a D.I.Y. rocket ship and launched into space. Generate your character quickly by picking a few cool abilities and then try not to die horribly while, say, salvaging loot from a derelict freighter overrun by weird space zombies. Highly recommended, would get nearly space-murdered again."
Design Discussion: Resolution Hexcrawl
A weird, brief one for you all! I was thinking out loud on Twitter about a new type of resolution system:
People helpfully pointed to the cool things Goblin’s Henchman has done with the idea of the hex flower. All of that is helpful inspiration, but it isn’t quite the same as what I’m mulling.
I am imagining a game where you shuffle up a set of hexes and deal them out into a larger Resolution Hex (shaped and randomized like the Settlers of Catan board). The hexes have written on them possible move outcomes: Full success, success at a cost, partial success, near miss, abject failure, etc. Each player has a pawn on the Resolution Hex. This represents not your location in physical space, but in possibility space.
When you trigger a move, you roll d6s equal to a stat (or something, still working this part out!). Then, you look at your results and choose one of them. Move towards the corresponding side of the Resolution Hex (six sides to the Hex, six corresponding results on a d6). The choice might be obvious, if you’ve rolled a way to move onto a “full success” hex. But not if you’re choosing between various hexes with different drawbacks. And not if you’re trying to game out a couple moves ahead and keeping an eye on the overall Resolution Hex—maybe moving to that full success hex now will raise your chance of landing on a “deadly failure” hex next time!
I’m definitely interested in throwing something together to playtest this mechanic. What ideas would you want to see me explore in a Resolution Hex? And what interested “partial success” or “drawback” hexes should I include in the mix? I want to get your thoughts. Sound off on Twitter or in the comments here!
Elsewhere
—Free RPG Day is June 25th, 2022. Ask your friendly local game store if they are participating… and especially if they will stock copies of 9th Level Games’s anthology Level 1. This year’s Level 1 theme was Mythology. I contributed a game called “To Wield the Blade of Ages.” It draws inspiration from the comic chaos-inducing mechanics of Jeff Stormer’s Mission: Accomplished! My game is an epic fantasy version of a bickering debriefing session. You play a legendary hero trying to convince the Swordkeeper that you deserve the Blade of Ages—and none of the other heroes are truly worthy. Find the game for free in the Level 1 Anthology.
—I joined the Not DnD Show to discuss our game Back Again from the Broken Land with the host, Jess of EN Publishing. The conversation also delves into my own RPG origin story and an introduction to Powered by the Apocalypse games. Find the video below, and the podcast version here.
—My game the Great Soul Train Robbery was featured on Sarah’s Table, a show on the official GenCon TV Twitch channel! Many thanks to Sarah for the running the game. Check out the video below to see what happens when a Snake-handler, a Gambler, and a Blind Drifter try to steal a song too pure for this sinful earth from a train conducted by Wrath.
—There’s a Pay What You Want bundle of indie games up on itchio that includes my ENnie-nominated game Secret Science Sewer Siblings—along with 110 other games! You pay what you want, meaning you can get the whole kit and kaboodle for free. But if you chip in a little bit of money, you’re still getting a great deal AND you’re supporting a large swath of indie game creators. Check out the bundle here.
Till next time, may you deliver all your cargos successfully, skillfully navigate possibility space, and support your friendly local game store on Free RPG Day!
Gamefully yours,
Alexi
Thematically I think the hex resolution works on something where a characters decisions are always going to be constrained. Political intrigue comes to mind. Or a theme where the characters have a destiny or other determinant fate and the hex explores working with and against that tension.
I think it would be interesting if every time you moved your pawn to a new tile the other tiles that are no longer adjacent get shuffled, and perhaps flipped. If a flipped tile does not get used next, it becomes a “complete failure” tile. This would avoid going back and forth between two good choices as they would cause other tiles to become failures. Characters could use a resource to clear flipped tiles.
Another way to tweak this would be giving and receiving tiles from the other players at the table. Or mechanics that remove tiles from play or set amount of turns.
If the arrangement of the hexes is random, and the roll is also random to see which direction you move when moving from one hex to another, I think the meaning may all but disappear—at least, when treating this as a generic resolution mechanic. However, it could be interesting as a battle resolution mechanic. Every fight has its own tactical landscape, so you could come up with valid narrative reasons why the hexes are randomly arranged: why a triumph, say, isn’t easily available when one has just used a certain move or tactic. That might work best when the tiles are flavored with broad descriptions of battle moves or tactics. Having said that, I still think resolution mechanics should be humble and get off stage as quickly as they can, so players can get back to the fiction. But there’s a concise limning of a tactical game-space in these hexes, and I’ll be thinking more about it. Thanks for bringing it up!