Mothership Simultaneous Combat Resolution
The assumed combat resolution in the current edition of Mothership is player facing rolls, that is, the Warden describes the opponent(s) actions and player react with their actions, rolling as necessary. Monsters and other enemies don’t roll—their stats are used more to inform their power level and capabilities.
My main issue with running this way is it feels a little “squishy” for lack of a better term, it lacks structure with enemies having a variable number of actions dependent on number of players and their actions. Many Wardens do fine with this but I struggle with it a little. On the other hand, a straight side-based initiative or similar can result in a lot of rolling (if you are re-rolling each round), ramping up player stress… not necessarily a bad thing as combat should be stressful, but it is a little clunkier in a streamlined system like Mothership.
Here’s what I’ve come up with I’m excited to try, a pseudo-simultaneous initiative order with a little more structure than player facing rolls but still pretty deadly (and it lets you make rolls for monsters using their stats). Here’s how it works:
- The Warden declares all opponent actions.
- Players declare player character actions.
- All actions are resolved simultaneously.
- Players may make a Speed check to take Priority, resolving their action before opponents’
By having the Warden always declare opponent reactions first it gives some agency to the players to respond. This still might not save them though, as the simultaneous resolution means that they might still get hit with an attack even as they attempt to flee or dive for cover.
Having the option to take Priority with a check gives players a chance here, with the risk of failure being they remain in the same position with some Stress added for the failed roll. Additionally, a critical failure could mean the opponent’s action resolves first, their action doesn’t resolve, or similar (a crit success may mean a bonus to their action roll, getting a second free action, etc).
Here is an example of play:
Alice and Bob have broken into a warehouse searching for a particular item. Alice is standing in the open, keeping lookout while Bob is behind a stack of crates searching for their loot. Suddenly they are ambushed by bounty hunters sent to stop them.
Warden: These bounty hunters are the same ones you gave the slip by ramming a trash barge into their ship and are pissed. They look like they are willing to kill you and take a penalty on the bounty. Bounty hunter A takes aim at you Alice, B is trying to find a shot on Bob.
Alice: I’m going to fire a shot back as I try and dive for cover with my movement.
Bob: I’m behind cover right? I’m going to keep searching for what we need, if we don’t find it we’re good as dead anyway.
Warden: Ok, let’s resolve all these action. Alice, do you want to try and take priority? Otherwise That bounty hunter will have a chance of hitting you before you get into cover.
Alice: Let’s go for it… Damn I rolled a 72, fail. I rolled 20 for my Combat check though. 3 damage from my revolver.
Warden: Ok, gain a Stress Alice. Bounty hunter A rolls a 32 Combat and succeeds, dealing 6 damage with a burst from his pulse rifle as it grazes your side. He takes a wound as well from your shot. You are in cover now at least.
Bob, Bounty hunter B succeeds on his combat roll as well, but you are in cover so his low roll of 2 damage doesn’t get through to you. As you dig through the crate in front of you you find the macguffin you are looking for!Bob: Great, let’s get out of here.
Warden: Ok next round. The bounty hunters are going to fire at both of you again behind your cover. What are your actions?
And so on. My though on the Warden always declaring actions first is to give the players a little bit of an edge and agency when actions are already difficult for them. You could also do a sort of side based initiative each round, where the winning side forces the other to declare their actions first, but actions still resolve simultaneously. Certain opponents like aliens or psychics might shake this up by making players declare actions first, representing their fast speed or precognition.
I’m excited to give this a try in real play, as personally I find the structed combat session works a little better for me, but this is still pretty dangerous and fast-paced.
Morale as Initiative
Inspired by this wasitlikely post to use morale as initiative for old school type games. It is less sloppy drippy and therefore more boring but I think it fits in fine with your standard b/x type game.
On starting combat roll 2d6 against enemy morale as usual. Exceeding their morale means the players go first, rolling lower they go second.
For what enemy morale to use:
- The value from the enemy if one type
- If groups of multiple enemy types, use the higher morale between them, particularly if they are working together. Alternatively, you can check morale against each group, and make a kind of sandwich initiative.
- If the enemy group has a leader, use their morale (until they die). Re-roll at the top of each round, with modifiers accounting for anything that happened in the previous round, usually a + or - 1. For example:
- Killing an enemy leader.
- Killing half or more of the enemy.
- Acting especially intimidating (taking the time to get trophies from kills, special war cries or drums, acting sub-optimally for the purposes of intimidation).
- Use of fear magic, scary illusions, etc.
- Maintaining superior tactics (holding the high ground or forcing opponents through a chokepoint).
- If the enemy downs a player character.
Adjudicate as makes sense of course, increase the bonus or penalties for especially effective tactics. Especially reward things like ambushes, war cries, or generally acting like maniacs. Sides should be using intimidation tactics mid battle to try and gain the initiative through fear.
This method means that mindless creatures like undead almost always act first outside of being surprised. Unburdened with fear, such creatures act decisively and without hesitation. An unnerving thought to rational beings with a sense of self preservation (which may even incur a penalty).
Sandwich Initiative Alternative
I love me a sandwich initiative. To make this work, each player rolls 2d6 individually against the enemy morale target, adding bonuses or subtracting penalties based on their individual actions. Those that beat the enemy morale go before enemies, those that fail go after.
Dolmenwood Ponderings - On the Soul
As I gear up for my Dolmenwood campaign I’m pondering little bits of lore as I want to run it. These may be considered as doctrine or true by characters in setting, but doesn’t mean it is the Absolute Truth.
On Souls
The immortal creatures of fairy (including fairy and demi-fey kindred) do not have souls. Their essential spirit or life force is inherently bound to their material form. When a fairy dies they do not go on to everlasting reward in the heavens of the One True God, or the torments of the hells, they simply cease to exist. This binding of spirit and flesh is what fends off the ravages of age and disease for eternity. Demi-fey are no different, but their long exposure to the mortal realm weakens their essence and causes their bodies to eventually fail.
It is thought that in death fairies still experience a kind of consciousness or dream-like state, a waking nightmare as their flesh-essence decays until it can no longer cohere and fades away.
This lack of a soul is why fairies find Liturgic and the pealing of church bells unpleasant. It is said these things pull at the mortal soul, bringing it closer to god. For fairy-folk this feels as if one was trying to tug at their flesh from the inside.
Mortals are those who have had their spirits cloven from their physical bodies so that the soul could live in reward for faith to the church (or for faithless pagans to be punished for failure to convert). Conflicting accounts of the afterlife from resurrected pagans and worshippers of foreign gods are conveniently swept under the rug.
It is possible for a fairy to gain a mortal soul by performing a holy ritual — often in the course of a marriage to a mortal, though there are other ceremonies for conversion. As a consequence, the fairy becomes mortal themselves, aging and dying like any other, their soul promised to the afterlife.
So, too, are there stories of fairy-folk tricking mortals into losing their soul. Mortals eating food in the lands of fairy, or bewitched by fairy-folk into pagan marriage, among other things. Whether their soul is re-bound to flesh or whisked off to the hells is unknown, but warned of in equally dire measure by the church.
On Resurrection
Resurrection as granted by divine magic calls the soul back from whatever plane it resides in and binds it to regenerated flesh.
Elfs and other fairy characters (including player characters) cannot benefit from holy miracles of resurrection; there is no soul to re-bind to mortal flesh (for this reason there are no “naturally” occurring fairy ghosts. However, phantasmal undead of fairies can still be formed by magic, and the animation of their bodies is as trivial as any other).
The Great Fairy Rune of Unravel Death does work on the fey: it’s magic is more akin to time manipulation than the re-binding of souls, reverting the body and essence to a state before death. This work on mortals too — without recalling their soul. A mortal resurrected in this way is soul-less: their souls still residing in a plane of the afterlife, with all the consequences this implies.
Dolmenwood Campaign Session 1 Report
This is my second Dolmenwood session report. We picked up where we left off, midway through the Winter’s Daughter adventure, now switched to the Dolmenwood system (plus some house rules like roll-to-cast magic).
The party moved to investigate the central chamber of the first floor, a crypt of Sir Chyde’s family, discovering two floating skeletons dancing to distant music, a strange rift, and a dripping vaporous slime. They attempted to bottle some of this, only to find their vial floating away toward the ceiling.
After introductions and inquiries as to who they are (his parents) and being told in no uncertain terms that it was hoped they were tomb robbing, the party made a deal: they would reunite the parents with the rest of the family buried in the room which would surely be worthy of some reward. They pushed the skeletal remains in the undisturbed coffers into the slime, reanimating them, and the skeletal parents offered their jewelry in return, overjoyed at reuniting with their children in dance. In the process, Basil got coated in slime and began to float as well, he started steering himself around the room with a staff found in one of the coffers.
Moving on, they found a room full of statues bearing weapons and a mural covered in mold. They cautiously tried removing a weapon, then seeing no reaction removed the rest to stack outside the tomb. Hollace carefully removed the mold wearing a make shift mask, and avoided breathing in spores. They discovered a mural of Sir Chyde and the second dog companion’s name.
With those pieces of the puzzle, they returned to the guardian chamber and called out the names. The stone dogs bowed to allow passage, and they pushed through to the burial chamber of Sir Chyde. They found his ghost manifest, sadly pining after a portrait of an elven princess. Upon entering he challenged them to their purpose. The party convinced him they meant no disrespect and came seeking only an artifact: a ring. He said he could not part with it for anything, as it connected him to his betrothed: a frost elf princess. He begged them to bring the ring to her, that she could be reached by descending to the lower parts of the barrow and would surely reward them well to which they agreed.
At first they were wary, worried the elf princess was imprisoned here in the tomb and some great danger awaited below. Descending carefully they found a barrier of candles with hints of snow and frost beyond. Eventually Stira just stepped through. After swimming visions of angelic light she found herself outdoors in a frozen wood, a white tower upon an island in a lake in the distance.
After some initial testing to ensure they could return through the passage, they ventured into the wood, noting moss-covered bodies in the trees. In the distance they saw three elf knights approach and enter the tower. Worried these were some of the princess’ jailors and not wanting to face heavily armed knights, they snuck around back to look for another way in. Basil, still floating, worked with Stira to scale they outside of the tower and tie off a rope to the top. On the way they peered in the windows, seeing kitchens, then a banquet hall, and finally the princess’ rooms at the top.
After seeing the windows were set firmly in their frames, Stira knocked, showing Sir Chyde’s ring, prompting the princess to swiftly through a pot through shattering the glass. After discovering they meant to bring Sir Chyde to her, she gratefully helped them in the room, and sent word the rest of the party was welcome.
Overjoyed at being reunited, the Princess Snow-Falls-at-Dusk and Sir Chyde heaped the party with rewards, and invited them as guests of honor to their wedding. After nightfall when this ended, they noticed the passages through the wood closing up and hurried home, discovering from their companion outside (one player who could not make the session and was left behind) that five days had passed.
With lots of loot and lucky encounter rolls they had much to carry but were unscathed, not even needing to fight this entire session. They made camp as it was night, then in the morning decided to head to the closer town, Lankshorn, to unload some loot before heading back home to High-Hankle to see after their NPC companion. As they were basically fully encumbered they could only travel one hex a day, fortunately Lankshorn was in the adjacent hex. Safely securing their loot (again without encounters on the road or during the night), they each gained XP enough to reach level 2. Actually turning their treasure into coin will be a more difficult matter.
Dolmenwood Campaign Session 0 Report
This will be the start of my ongoing session reports for my newly started Dolmenwood campaign. We were using a Shadowdark/Dolmenwood/OSE/homebrew mashup for the system, but I’ve decided going forward to just use the Dolmenwood system with some tweaks in future sessions. Spoilers ahead for Winter’s Daughter, an adventure module for Dolmenwood.
The party is made up of Basil (Human fighter), Chloe (Breggle cleric), Hollace (Human wizard), Shamash (Human fighter), and Stira (Human thief). They begin in High Hankle, either recently arrived from the greater empire to the south or as locals who have not had opportunity to travel the wood.
They all have an NPC friend in common: Dimothy Tolman, who has landed himself in jail and requests the aid of the group. He just needs enough bribe money to get out, and fortunately had a line on some treasure to be found in a barrow to the north, the burial mound of Sir Chyde. Thus the party found themselves in the woods, on the path to the tomb (I started them off directly at the adventure site just to get the ball rolling. We’ll be dealing with travel afterwards).
The party first encountered a circle of standing stones on the path leading to the tomb, inside which was an eerie twitching stag skeleton covered in green ooze. Unsettling metallic owls hang from the surrounding trees looking onward. Basil, would be archeologist, stepped forward to investigate first, and found the haze surrounding the skeleton dizzying so backed away. Hollace inspected the runes carved on the stones and determined they relate to summoning, perhaps some form of witchcraft (the group is not yet familiar with the Drune or the witches of the wood). A toad hopped from the wood and rather disconcertingly uttered the word “Betrayal” before hopping away (and becoming something of an obsession for Shamash, though he didn’t pursue the toad). Deciding to to keep their eyes on the prize, they moved forward to the tomb.
Four of the party had enough strength to move the block of granite that sealed the tomb, and promptly did so. Chole lit her lantern and the party descended. They entered a room with various religious objects (a book, candle, wooden cherub, and Chapes holy symbol of the Pluritine church), which animated as soon as the group entered (getting particularly agitated at Stira and Hollace as Chaotic characters). Basil nabbed the book from the air and sat on it. Stira and Hollace were also very deft as their objects dove towards them, Hollace capturing the candle in her bag and Stira snatching the holy symbol by its circular form. Chole, being a cleric, managed to calm the cherub down with gentle assurances and prayer. They all tied up the objects and stashed them way, bound, for now. The scuffle revealed a mosaic below, which Shamash cleared to see a scene of Sir Chyde fighting frost elves. This, along with some imagery on them standing stones outside, let them to comment that frost elves (or maybe elves and fairies in general), didn’t seem to be well liked here.
Undeterred, they searched deeper in the burial mound, finding a room with an empty plinth with drag marks leading back to the entrance and an ornate mirror. Hollace prompt strode up to inspect it, only to be caught in its magic and paralyzed. The others cautiously began inspecting the mirror and frozen Hollace from the side, looking for ways to help her. Initial prodding and moving the frozen wizard were no help, nor was Chloe slinging the wooden cherub at the mirror (to its dismay), shattering it, although this prevented future paralyzations. Shamash decided to carry Hollace along the drag marks and out of the tomb, with the idea he would place her in the standing stones. Fortunately the sunlight outside immediately cured her affliction.
Meanwhile Basil and Stira forged ahead, finding an old chapel with a door hidden behind a tattered tapestry. The door was swollen and stuck, so Basil forced it open, revealing a hidden room and a tunnel behind. Attracted to the noise, three worm creatures like tongues with lamprey mouths emerged and attacked, seeking a meal, while the rest of the group caught up. Rolling high on initiative, Basil quickly was able to dispatch two of the worms. Hollace followed up with a magic missile to finish the last before they could act. The room secure they managed to find a book in a desk, which gave a clue: the name of one of Sir Chyde’s trusty hounds.
As they were about to leave Shamash decided to clear this floor looking for another mural, instead finding a loose flagstone. After careful inspection by Stira, they determined it was safe to open, and found a metal box inside with a suspicious looking lock. Opting to investigate later, they stashed the box for now.
Moving onward, the party came to a large room with sealed stone doors, large stone dog statues chained to the wall, and an inscription saying to “call to the companions”. Shamash figured they would need to call out the names of the dogs, of which they only had one. More investigation would be needed.
We had to end the session here, as we had spent most of the time in character creation and setting up the new campaign, but this was a great start!
Merchant Dispositions using Reaction Rolls
Merchants are one of the few people who have liquid coin to buy treasures dredged from dungeons and may have the inclination to do so (Nobles would rather claim it as theirs to begin with and the Church will happily accept donations but maintains paying for treasures is sinful and base). Even then, the goods must be either something the merchant feels they can resell at profit or want personally as a status symbol. So they will usually offer less than its value.
The following is a procedure for dealing with merchants with a modified reaction roll table. Make a 2d6 roll for a given merchant. This can be modified by character bonuses or circumstances as you would any reaction roll. Then consult the following for the result:
2 or less: Offers 50% of value for the goods, but hires thugs to rob you and recoup their coin.
3-5: Offers insultingly low purchase prices (10% of value). Reaction rolls to haggle at -1.
6-8: Offers 50% of value.
9-11: Offers 50% of value. Reaction rolls to haggle at +1.
12 or more: Offers 75% of value, reaction rolls to haggle at +2.
Keep the rolled disposition for a known merchant the party returns to, unless changes to circumstances would mean a change in attitude.
Haggling
You can haggle with a merchant by making another reaction roll once. The end result assumes you’ve gone back and forth and exhausted negotiations. Any good arguments for the player or trade skills should factor into this roll as bonuses (or maluses if they are poor hagglers).
2 or less: They refuse to budge on their offer.
3-5: They will pay 5% higher than initial offer.
6-8: They will pay 10% higher than initial offer.
9-11: They will pay 15% higher than initial offer.
12 or more: They want this for themselves, and will pay full value. There is a 1-in-6 chance they pay 25% more than its value out of desire to own it.