About half a year ago (shit, time flies) I cobbled something together in a flash of inspiration and hyperfocus:
It is the result of wanting to make something GLoG compatible, but more suited to my personal preferences. I warned during the announcement that I might very well never do anything with FLoK again, as the hyperfocus had ended and I was knee deep in Project Social which I wanted to finish first...
First things first
What follows is a summary of my initial round of playtests as well as my reflections on what worked and what didn't. I tried to make my process as well as my thoughts as transparent as possible hoping that some of this might still be useful or interesting for folks that aren't interested in FLoK itself.
A quick summary of FLoK
Though the rules fit on two pages I'll quickly summarise the system:
In the world of FLoK, stories and events are closely intertwined:
- When something extraordinary happens it spawns a story (even if nobody witnessed it)
- This story is always slightly exaggerated.
- The exaggeration in the story becomes real, making locations and creatures extraordinary
In short: Characters become more what they do. If they do cool shit, their characters gain cool abilities, if they are really unlucky or their action backfires disastrously they gain weaknesses or a bad reputation. This is true for PCs, NPCs and locations alike.
PCs start of relatively ordinary, with a single rather mundane thing they are known for. They also roll 6 times 3d6 in order to generate tags for their basic qualities (strength, dexterity, etc. the basic D&D stuff). These tags inform the player how the world perceives their character and are thus descriptive, not prescriptive. They are expected to have everything on their person you would someone with that background to carry around with them, as well as one thing you wouldn't expect someone like that to possess.
To resolve uncertain outcomes, you roll d20:
- On a 11-19 you get the most likely desirable outcome
- On a 2-10 you get the moest likely undesirable outcome
- On a 20, the best possible thing happens
- On a 1, the worst possible thing happens
Magic in FLoK works through Words of Power. These words of phrases can only exist as either a word or an event. If you use a Word of Power to describe the world, this description will become true and the Word of Power is used up.
Preparing the Playtest
The current FLoK document is at best an MVP or minimal viable product, at least to the extend that such a think exists for tRPGs (one could argue that 'nothing' is the true MVP of tRPGs, but I digress).
Because the most notable feature of FLoK is the growth system, I wanted to run a few games in the same world and with the same characters. Which sucks, because scheduling is a bitch, especially when you are looking for regular playtesters.
With that in mind I figured that if I prepared 4 sessions worth of one shots (about 2 hours each), I would probably have at least a few players that could attend more than 1 of these. If I then make a little region map where all of these adventures take place I would be able to run a continuous game with a rotating cast. So that is what I did (feel free to follow the link to see my notes. Warning: these notes are very much meant for personal use and are thus not the most ledgible).
Luckily it mostly worked out as intended: Only two of the pool of six players didn't get a chance to play in multiple games. So I'll go through them in order, explaining very briefly what happened, what I thought worked well and what I might want to tweak.
Thoughts and Reflections
Illustrations of La bête du Gévaudan, inspiration for the Beast of Kingswood
Session 1: The Beast of Kingswood
Summary
In the Beast of Kingswood a monstrous many-headed wolf torments the local towns, killing folks as well as their livestock. As Kingswood is royal huntinggrounds killing any animal in it is illegal, which the beast knows and is why they choose to reside their inbetween attacks.
This deterred my players from ever venturing into the woods, instead organising the villages surrounding it to starve the Beast by keeping their livestock away from the pastures, with the intend to lure the Beast into a trap. Their initial trap failed, but a lucky 20 allowed them to still trap the Beast in a giant pit, which the locals have since covered and guard to this day.
The System
I really tried leaning into the contrivance that if you do exceptional things, stories will emerge about this event. When my players made a public promise to hunt the beast, folks from other towns would expect the arrival of these 'beast hunters' despite no messengers having been send ahead of them. Initially this freaked out my players, worrying their names would reach the King.
This was a good lesson, as I thought it was clear that these stories wouldn't necessarily contain the names of whomever performed them. If someone where to assasinate the King, their would certainly be a story about the King's Assassin describing in general terms how this happened, but if they did so covertly the story wouldn't contain their name. I need to find a way to communicate that more clearly in the game text.
It also made me think about how something like oaths could be a fun addition to the system. Maybe upon breaking an oath you immediately suffer a humiliation, getting a negative tag, but upon fulfilling an oath you instead get a positive one. I'd have to tinker and play around with the idea a bit to know if this is something that could be fun, and, if so, if I'd want to put it in the main game, or instead add it as a little addenndum at the end of the layed out version.
The Adventure
I didn't expect my players not to enter the woods at all. The capital punishment for hunting there was supposed to thwart a full frontal assault, but was maybe a bit too much of a deterrent. I think the monster and the surrounding towns ended up having enough character to still carry the adventure so it wasn't a big deal.
What's more, the players ended up trying to use the fall out of a different adventure to their advantage in this one. This sort of out of the box thinking is great and exactly the sort of player behavior I enjoy seeing when I run games.
Also, I think I'd like to be more explicit about giving players alternative options for rewards than hoping for Renown. To see how easily folks could come up with these progression tags I allowed both players to gain a Renown tag, despite only one of them actually doing something really impressive and memorable. However, not only did it seem to be a lot harder to come up with Renown tags if your character hadn't done anything particularly memorable, but I also don't want players to feel like the only way to gain anything from adventures is to hope they'll get a chance to do something memorable.
One character took on an apprentice during this game and I think that is a great example of alternative rewards, but I'd like to find a way to communicate this to players and GMs more clearly and maybe add some tables of named objects, weird retainers or allegiances or something to give some examples.
Medieval depiction of Sirens as their description transitions from birds to fish from a video by youtube show Monstrum.
Session 2: The Siren in the Sewers
Summary
In the Siren of the Sewers a mutated widow uses her enthralling voice to lure lovers of all ages into the sewers beneath Marktburg, a labyrinthine sprawl of tunnels which defies logic. There, she intents to use her abductees as sacrifices to ressurect one of the dead tyrannical Gods.
Again, the players were reluctant to head into the sewers, thinking initially of ways to lure out the Siren and confront her in the town itself. When they found a reliable way to reach the Siren's lair, they did end up going through the sewers to confront her. After a sudden kiss, meant to convince her one of the PCs was her dead husband failed, they managed to to unbind the kidnapped people and overpower her.
The System
In the previous session I'd used Electric Bastionland's luckroll as an oracle to answer questions about the setting that I hadn't fleshed out initially. Afterwards I wondered why I didn't just use the resolution system of this system instead. I tried it for this session and I think it worked well.
More generally though, I do wonder if a 10% chance is a big enough chance to generate exceptional results, especially when using the resolution system as an oracle for the GM. The main reason for this is that the rules disincentivize rolling a lot of dice, meaning that when you do roll, the chance of getting a 1 or a 20 are very slim. Moreover, I tend to default to resolving situations with as little rolls as possible because of the initiative system I use. In a situation in which various actors are interacting with a single entity, I tend to roll only a single die to see how things unfurl. If I manage to organize a few more playtests after revisions I might experiment a bit to see if using a d12 or maybe even a d6 works better.
I also felt like this time, players seemed to accept information given to them as complete. As the gimmick of this world is that all exceptional events are chronicled in stories the players get a lot of information at the start of the adventure. However, I envision this information not always being complete (mundane things being left out) and sometimes information is presented fragmented despite being linked (sewage mutates in the sewers mutates, the Siren is described as having feathers as well as a fishy tail).
It is a similar problem I had with players fearing their names would turn up in stories about their illegal exploits: despite the basic premise being something folks seem to wrap their heads around pretty quickly, the nuance and details aren't currently being conveyed in the way I would want them to. Maybe writing up some 'player advice' for this game would help with this.
The Adventure
I feel like this adventure is the weakest one of the bunch. Everything folks seemed to like about it is stuff I had to come up with on the fly. The oracle combined with the stuff I had written for the adventure made it easy to come up with that stuff, but it was definitely the least well defined of the four and I think that came through.
If I do end up keeping the Siren of the Sewer around for the follow up to this initial round of playtesting, I think I would want to add some more definition to the town (even if just through random tables) as well as some procedures for how often the Siren attacks and a more interesting take on the remains of the dead god than 'pile of hard but sticky goop that lashes out when poked'.
Cover art of the amazing Norse Tales: Stories from Across the Rainbow Bridge.
The cunning giants in those stories inspired the Giant Warlord.
Session 3: The Giant's Giant Taxes
Summary
The titular Giant is a warlord, which has been given a castle for playing a vital role in the most recent war. As a reward to his soldiers he promised them a party where the ale never stops flowing and the plates are never empty. His soldiers proceded to party for a full year, bankrupting the Giant and forcing him to raise rediculous taxes on local villages (literally taking their houses from them as collaterol).
The players initially intended to poison the Giant, but upon learning he wasn't into parties himself and more of a gardener they instead attempted to put a stop to the never ending party. Upon doing so, the Giant was incredibly thankful. Being broke, he rewarded them with strange plants from his garden.
The System
Systemwise I don't think much was learned here. The resolution system functioned as intended, but I did find the recurring players had a slightly harder time to come up with Renown tags than before. As the group during session 2 was a bit larger while still only playing for 2 hours it makes sense that not every character managed to do something memorable.
Given this, I think that I'll try to be a bit more strict with gaining Renown in future playtesting to see if the system still holds up in that way. To compensate I think I'd also prefer to put more weird stuff in adventures that might affect PCs or be used by them, to provide players with alternative ways to change throughout and between sessions.
The Adventure
I think the castle is a pretty fun location based adventure, though it can be a bit hard to keep in mind what people can see from each location (and thus for which places you might have to roll random encounters). The Warlord is really threatening, being able to kill 10 knights with a single strike. Given this, it incentivices scheming which my players did.
Again, they tried to make use of the fact that I nestled the adventure in a larger location. This is a somewhat recurring theme and I really like it. It sort of leans into this idea of thinking beyond the room in dungeon crawling. To make preparation and scheming interesting, I might want to come up with more concrete timers though, as there was now no reason to to first take as much time as necessary to prepare.
This is the one adventure for which I didn't have the folk lore in my sight and what I did prepare felt a bit rushed. As such, it felt like I might have not prepared my players for the adventure as much as I would have liked. As the adventure was quite popular among the players, I'd love to remedy that and include it in whatever the FLoK will end up becoming.
Physique of the Wyrm was inspired by this fella from Hilda, though they are otherwise very different.
Session 4: The Poisonous Wyrm
Summary
The Wyrm, the most venemous creature alive, has made its nest near the spring of the river, poisoning it in the process. All life in the river has either died or become poisonous itself. Meanwhile three orphan sisters turned assassins are trying to make a living selling the Wyrm's venom to other assassins.
The players loaded up on supplies in the nearby village of Schurksende (Dutch for Bandits-end) and made for the nest. After two of the assassin sisters were slain by one of the players, the other two found out the Wyrm was hurt by a previous adventurer which intended to kill it. Their attempt to help the Wyrm was foiled by the third PC, who shot the Wyrm, having not heard or seen what had transpired.
The System
This was the first time that I sort of stumbled over the resolution system a bit. One player kept trying things that were quite obviously dangerous and that I didn't feel I knew how to adjudicate without relying on dice. Framing the stakes before every roll slowed the game down a bit. As situations always change after resolution the fight was still a lot shorter than fights I've ran in most other systems, but I did feel like there might be something I could fiddle with in terms of stake setting.
One of the players advised that the setting of the stakes be more of a responsibility of the player. Currently I tend to go 'I think the best case scenario of what you describe would be', whereas I think that might at times cause me to roll when it might not be necessary because I misinterpret what the player aims to achieve. Instead going for 'What do you think the most likely desireable outcome of that would be?' might make setting the stakes a lot smoother.
The Adventure
I like the adventure, though some players rightfully pointed out that harvesting poison from the Wyrm, when it is leaking freely into the river for everyone to get some might not make a lot of sense. If I keep it around, I'll be sure to change it so that the poisoned riverwater is making everyone ill and slowly killing them if it is all they drink, rather than making it kill people outright.
That might also prevent players from defaulting to the poisoned river as a tool to solve some of the other problems troubling the people of this region. Not that I mind them using the fall out of one adventure to solve problems in a different one, but if the poisoned water is too potent it ironically turns it into a panacea for dealing with strong foes. (My players even contemplated feeding the poisoned water to the poisonous Wyrm, only opting out of it because they assumed he would be immune).
Having what are in effect two entrances right next to each other (ending up either on the west or the east side of the pond in the first room) I think works pretty well, but I might see if I can't find a way to jaquays it a bit more, as currently though you can see the other rooms and find ways to get to them, the dungeon is basically just a fork without much in terms of loops.
This art by Teo Skaffa really fits the mood I aim for.
Post-session feedback
After finishing the final session and thinking over what I wanted to know from my players, I send them a form in which I asked some specific questions to get some feedback.
I wanted to know what they thought of the resolution system (they mostly liked it, or at least didn't think it got in the way of play), what they thought about character generation (the takeaway seems to be that it could use some more examples or guidance), if they thought it was easy to understand the way Renown works (they did for the most part) and if they found it easy to come up with Renown tags (it seemed that it was easier if characters had done memorable things).
There were also some questions about the adventures (if they enjoyed it, if they thought they had enough information, if it benefitted from being set in larger area and if they would like the adventure to be part of whatever I end up making FLoK) and if they would be willing to run a more polished version of the game as part of playtesting (which they all were!).
At the end there was also the option to give some final thoughts about playtesting. This is what the players had to say:
"Codifying the generation of "facts" about the world would be a very useful thing to add."
This refers to the stories people tell about a place or person and tells players about how these things work. I don't know what my process is for something doing that, so I guess I'll have to figure that out.
"I really like your habit of framing BEST/DES./UNDES./OOPS at the outset and think a summary of that would do well in the rules itself. (Cthulhu Dark and The Between both have really good examples of this sort of actionable referee advice)."
I'll definitely take a look to see how I can word this in an intuitive way. On top of that I think I should probably make explicit in the document that, because you don't change the odds, you should change the stakes. The best way I currently know how to explain this is with examples, but it would be nice to also have some sort of explanation that summarises this.
"I LOVE the renown implications in the setting. It’s fantastic"
Clearly there is going to be some positive bias in the feedback I got, as people signed up for this based on whether or not they liked the sound of the game. Still, I am happy that there are other people that are excited about the setting as well.
"I thought it might not be necessary to roll 3d6 for stats, because they did not have much impact on the game. I liked both adventures, but thought the Giant one seemed better for a publication of the game."
Despite the feedback being anonymised, I am pretty sure a different player gave similar feedback (as that player didn't play in the Giant's adventure). At the moment, I am a bit conflicted about what to do with the 3d6 stat tags. On the one hand some players tell me that it helped them to visualise their character better. Also, in the document it is worded as you being perceived this way by others, making them purely descriptive (in the literal sense) and thus not prescriptive for play (a rash character doesn't have to be rash).
Originally I added the tag variation of strength, dexterity, constitution, etc. because this started out as FKR GLoG, but I think it is pretty obvious it has become something entirely different at this point so there is no real obligation to hold on to it. My current idea is to scrap the stat tags and instead give players tables similar to those found in Maze Rats to determine things like 'social standing', 'background', 'appearance', 'twist item' etc. Using tables like that also has the added benefit of conveying the setting, which for an FKR game is currently severly lacking.
More art by Teo Skaffa to complement the earlier illustratuion.
The combination of these two fits the feeling I have in mind pretty well.
The Setting
Some of the most enthusiastic responses I've gotten during the actual playtesting was in reference to the setting. Most of the setting is currently missing from the FLoK ruleset. All that is there is a metaphysical commitment to language, an explanation of the magic and in that explanation a reference to dead gods.
When my players were making characters, they rightfully weren't really sure what sort of characters they were supposed to be making. One of them asked me for details about the setting and, as I was really looking for something that felt a bit more like fairy tales in my gaming at the time, this is what I send them:
The playtest document I made for myself as well as the adventures carry some of this tone as well, but it will be important to see how I can best communicate this setting to the players (who will not be able to see the adventure beforehand) and to the GMs (who will have to make rulings based on these implied truths about the world).
The tables for character generation that I am considering might be a good first step, but I think finding good public domain art as well as some evocative names for the game and the various parts of the system will be vital.
Finally, the choice to use mostly Dutch names for things, though an interesting attempt at writing what you know, makes names needlessly hard to pronounce for non-native speakers and they aren't informative (I might as well have used 'Empheraldia'). In the future I think I'll keep some Dutch naming conventions (stuff like -dam and -drecht), but add those to english words that speak more to the imagination of an english speaking audience.
Where to next?
An MPV is intended to be a prove of concept and I think that it has succeeded as such. I think the next stage in development will be to get an alpha version of FLoK at other tables. Ideally, I would make some sort of playtest package with not just rules but adventures as well, which people could use to run games with little effort as this would increase the likelyhood of folks being able and willing to take FLoK out for a spin.
Such a playtest package would require that a lot of stuff that is now still in my head, gets written down in clear terms so they are useable by tables that won't have me there to answer questions they might have. I firmly believe that tRPGs are inherently a DIY hobby, but I if my aim is to share something with people I also believe I should try to do so in an effective way. This means conveying the setting, the underlying principles of the Renown system and the way you can determine and alter stakes rather than odds in an accesible yet terse format.
So in concrete terms, what will be the next steps for FLoK (assuming I will stick to those)?
- Find good public domain art. This will help convey the setting even before I start the labourious process of final layout. I suck at this, so I'll have to ask people more experienced to point me to some resources that are good for finding these.
- Make some tables for generating characters. Character generation seemed to be the part of the current rules that could benefit from an overhaul. Maze Rats style tables will provide players with some more guidance for character creation as well as help communicate the setting.
- Write out GMing Guidelines. For how to play this world (primarily the renown system and being very liberal with information), how to write adventures for this world, how to set stakes rather than odds, how to resolve complex conflicts without turn-based initiative, etc.
- Writing out Player Guidelines. This is often overlooked which I think is a shame. However, in FLoK it would be especially important to provide some guidelines for players, because the progression system is rather unconventional and works best if players try more unconventional things.
- Polishing (some of) the adventures. Giving playtesters not only tools to use but also something to use them on is probably the best way to make playtesting low effort, which decreases the buy in required to get to playtest to begin with. I also prefer it when systems come with playable materials, even if those playable materials are just there to be hacked to pieces.
The nice thing about this list is that it can be completeld in any order. The problem with it is that is seems like a lot of work. I hope I'll be able to maintain the focus and drive to finish this in a relatively short amount of time.
I'll be sure to chronicle my progress through this list on here, hoping that it will work as some sort of external control to make sure I'll keep at it.
Many thanks to the playtesters:
7th Outpost, playing Nimrod the Dragonslayer, link to blog
Anton, playing Zondle the Clockmaker's Son, link to blog
Hat in the box, playing Vilnem the Crow Augur and Alex the Apprentice, link to blog
Gio il Mago, playing Jacques the Champion, link to twitter page
Sean F. Smith, playing Revolushun Collin the Steeplejack, link to itch.io page
Sigve Solvaag, playing Finn Hirschberg the Truffle-seeker, link to blog
Without them this playtest couldn't have happened and their feedback has been invaluable. I sincerely encourage checking out the links to their work.
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