Mon/Fri: The River and the Road

Design Project Incoming

You spend a while plinking at trying to do a thing, thinking about what you actually intend to do with it. I don't make it a habit of just trying to make stuff work if I can't put my full heart behind a thing, because that's how I wore myself out in games the first time around. BASIC is the result of the intent of making a really simple RPG system for quick play between groups of people who tend keep a busy schedule, or who have trouble getting out of the house, or for people who want to do things online.

I think my problem was, I was getting too formal in mood for what I was trying to do. Whatever the intent, BASIC is made to be relaxed. Time I learned how to relax and make a damn game with all this work I've done.

The River and the Road

Beyond mortal reckoning, in a place that flows between the in-betweens, there floats upon a roiling sea of chaos a liferaft made of pieces salvaged from worlds that have otherwise ended. This place is called The Converged Worlds, and it's a work forever in progress, sourced and sewn together by a pantheon of gods downcast or exiled. Churned and harrowed by that same roiling chaos that their creation now floats upon, their domains may differ and conflict, but they all share the same understanding from being cast adrift into a multiverse: namely, that entropy needs to exist, but that's cold comfort when it's fraying apart the fabric of your reality.

Five different peoples from five different places call the Converged Worlds so far. They are a century and a half removed from the addition of another, so those that remember any of their Worlds That Were have passed back into the cycle. Any enormity of being children of an averted end-time has long since passed. Instead, there exists a strange semblance of stability. It's hard to call it peace, because peace involves a general lack of violence. But there's no real nations any more, no armies, no monarchs, only councils and senates and figurehead speakers for scattered communities of rarely more than a thousand lives. Cities are the closest things to states, and even those are more regarded as 'a bunch of buildings that different sorts of people can come to inhabit' rather than a real seat of power. It's more that fights are everywhere, they're just very small. The like to hide when they're petty, because when pettiness was invented, magic didn't exist; it does now, and those who know how to harness it or who live their lives close to it tend to have a perspective on things that abides no pettiness.

One of the most surefire ways to gain that sort of perspective is to live life on the two major arteries that link the Converged Worlds together: the River, perfect and clear, with its many branches and tributaries, that flows like a mobius strip of freshwater; and the Road, a perpetually pristine run of overland roadway, complete with bridges and tunnels, at the edge of which much of civilization has grown around. By boat or by caravan, the Nomads of the River and the Road go the way of adventure. And also, delivery service. Because if there's a dragon out there to slay downriver, makes no sense if you don't take this shipment of rice that's going to the next town down. And if there's a bandit tollbooth down the next stretch of Road that needs to be cleared out of the way, there's no reason not to load up on that shipment of blankets on a caravan wagon that's due at a market two towns down your direction. And if you've got a shipment of medicine mixed for people who have bad nerves due in the next World over... you might want to consider sampling some of it as tax, because you're going into the Bleedspace, the place where one world bleeds into the next, the Architecture of Convergence pulls its most arcane horseshit in order to fudge the cosmic numbers and work, and things get sorta volatile and weird.

If you want to live an interesting life, a life of strange perspective, be a Nomad. Though, advice? Be one of those "glass half full" types of people, so the weird is more charming than it should be. You tend to get a little, uh, frazzled otherwise.

What's the Deal Here?

It's a game about jobs to be done, journeys to be made, paths to walk, and the people you meet along the way. And sometimes kick overboard. It's swords and spells and bows with neon bits and a vibe that's more about colourful weird places than evoking a period of history with fantastic elements; it's a Saturday morning cartoon for people old enough to have hangovers they've regretted more than others, and who know how cold you go when you realize you forgot to tie down the fucking cargo palette properly and now it has spilled all over the damn place and this is undeniably your fault.

You know, folks who know that sometimes you gotta laugh so you don't cry.

Oh Good Lord. What Are the Features?

Five Peoples to Play As: The Converged Worlds are full of weirdos. They come in many shapes and sizes, with morphologies that allow them varying special abilities and an Attribute that they focus on. Cultures exist within them- they modify aspects of a people, either adding or changing active or passive abilities, and add a little extra depth.

• The Lithic, those who couldn't be saved, whose most selfish member sought to surpass their sun, and instead snuffed out its light by bobbling it and burning up like an idiot. They were a people who valued knowledge, that all its branches had all they needed to create amazing books that captured the full experience of their contents, read with all the available senses. So the people that became Lithic wrote their lives into books, and filed themselves away into libraries. Rescued by the The Eleven, these spirits preserved in Books of Life now inhabit mighty statues of stone and steel, a Body to weather another doomsday if need be.
• The Mereid, the children of a cool, blue sea, whose aquatic halves are easily shed into a garment worn on their person. Secretive, insular and mischievous to those that lived on the land of their world, they were long assumed a myth, a story told by naive sailors aboard warships. That's because the land of their world was a scalded hellscape, rendered unlivable by a thousand years of war, and tales of an undersea realm of plenty seemed to be too good to be true. Until it was 'discovered' by those that live on land. But the Mereid were wily, resourceful and with unmatched Agility, and rather than be consumed by their world's final battle, with the aid of The Eleven, they stole their ocean home away, to the Converged Worlds.
• The Taun, with horns and hooves, from a world where wilderness is wilder than most others, where the lands are rougher, the weather is fiercer and the forests can grow thick enough as to render an eternal night. All nature from this place grew from the Primal Garden, which in turn, was watered by a freshwater spring that would forever replenish itself at the end of each winter, provided it was never emptied fully. One of their kind drank it, trying to achieve immortality. He didn't; the rest of the Taun tested that thoroughly, and it failed quite early on in the process. But their great perception from uncannily sharp Senses gave them the ability to see The Eleven, and the clues they had drawn on the land, in order to preserve their last fertile land.
• The Grimalkin, diminutive cat-folk goblins from a place where the only concrete law was a food chain, and they were the plucky and ironic underdogs in a cruel and unending sport of predation. They were outgunned in their world, a world of claws, fangs, venom, wings and massive, crushing bodies. Then they learned how to make guns, and also invented the concept of being outgunned. Because atop small bodies with just enough claw to allow easy climbing, and just enough spring for easy jumping, was a head, with a brain, that maybe wasn't the biggest, but it was the most sophisticated. But the concrete law of their world was, again, a food chain. Their world refused to end because they wanted to build a society because their superior Instinct had bested all other. It instead deployed its final answer to an especially tricky problem, to end this batch and start over again: The Great Devouring Worm. It was a problem only The Eleven could help them with.
• The Kith, a former 'protectorate people' of the ancient Pale Ones, who were pressed into service against a giant, hungry, eldritch hole at the center of their world, and its cult of thralls. Those Kith in the Converged Worlds are the children of those who rebelled against a bunch of haughty white assholes and their hole that could never be filled. Some fought for their freedom and made their way away out of the bodies of their oppressors; some went via more subtle means, and picked both their means and their moment to strike. All have come to see the value of knowing who should use which method, against what, and when. They're marked by their great Cunning, their ability to think, and plan, and scheme. And cause their own downfall, because really, Cunning can also be a major character flaw.

Five Ways to Walk the Nomad Path: The Nomad Way is travel, delivery, and whatever mayhem occurs during both. There's a number of Ways to approach this way of life, up to and including jabbing it with a big damn spear, learning ways to make it blow up and catch fire via focusing the senses, or simply think around it. Or hide under a pile of coats, and wait for this way of life to stop being as excessive as it currently is being. Within each of these Ways are Aspects, which let you walk a more specific path within the your chosen Way, so if you want to swing an axe, you can learn to be graceful while doing so, or if you want to be a smartypants, you don't necessarily also have to go into magic in order to yield big dividends with your brain.

• The Warrior, the way of placing a boot where one is desperately needed. "What do you do for a living?", someone might ask you. Your answer is most likely some variation on "oh you know, hit stuff, people mostly." You cultivate the Body needed to do this sort of work, which can be classified as heavy lifting, if only because there has to be a lift before the sudden and violent drops you tend to dish out.
• The Freelancer, who is more social than a rogue, but sneakier than a scoundrel, and knows how to look presentable despite questionable past employment. You know how these things go. Because you can wear many different kinds of gloves that all require a deft hand, your Agility tends to be your big selling point. Because at the end of the day, being able to jump a fence while being pursued is actually a transferable skill.
• The Outlander, the way of paying attention to what everything your senses tell you, but also knowing how to filter out the lies and illusions. You rely on your Senses to guide you in the places that are between civilization, on the River and Road, and in the wilderness beyond and between both, as well as to be your weapon when you need to shoot whatever horror has emerged from any of those things, dead, right in the face.
• The Seer, the way of more esoteric forms of perception, of coming to understand that your sixth sense (or whatever number of senses is considered "extra" to your people) is a many faceted suite, that can tell you all sorts of things when you learn to identify the signs they give you. This is the nature of your heightened Instinct, which can lead you to becoming an extraordinarily persuasive individual who may or may not actually be speaking magic words (or just the exact right ones), or one who can perceive the Architecture of Convergence, then leverage matter and energy out of it as magic.
• The Academic, the way of study, thought, creativity, philosophy and praxis. Every people's got a different sort of brainmeat- some of us have books that have trouble with committing to long term memory, instead of meat, for one -but all can be bright lights when the right mind finds the right focus. Your Cunning has led you to seek a focus in the strange and esoteric, deeper and more specific knowledge. You might know antiques, be they magical, haunted or just fancy. You might also know how to ape the Architecture of Convergence in individually crafted works of art, to be consumed bit by bit as spells cast by your own specific artistic method.

A Place to Build and Call Home, That Moves: You'll make a character for your group of Nomads in a game of The River and the Road, and like other RPGs, that character will have a sheet. But for the group, you're going to need something to travel in, and that will come in the form of your boat or your caravan. Both get their own sheets or boards, that you'll add to, upgrade and alter with both time and travel. It's the place where you live, store your stuff and travel in, and as your group goes, your home goes with you, as part of the group.

Cargo: Other People's Stuff; However, Your Problem: You're going to go on all sorts of different quests, do all sorts of jobs in The River and the Road- its your table game, use your imagination. However, there's an economy in play that's not really about the whole 'coinage' thing. Rather, it's about resources, and the ability for those resources to get where they're going. This is Cargo, and as a Nomad, you double as the local delivery service. Getting Cargo where it's going earns you Favors, which you can buy stuff with. Cargo is itself valuable, with varying degrees of value depending on where you are- should you come on some you're not meant to deliver (or you want to make an enemy), you can use it as currency too. The main problem is, some Cargo is a little hard to handle. Some of it is fragile. Some of it is very tempting to bandits. Some of it is actively dangerous and will try to harm you. You'll learn to deal with it, with experience. Or you won't, and your life on the River and the Road are immediately about to get complicated.

Travel and the Kismet Dice: The Converged Worlds are a weird place, in that some of it is literally impossible to map- the Bleedspaces have their own logic, but it's not actually very logical. That which is possible to map is actually quite extensively and well mapped at this point, which means you'll have a solid set of world maps to travel on, with spaces to count the days under way, and come upon new circumstances. Each space on a map is marked with a glyph, which is in turn associated with a d6 table of possible stuff that you could wind up encountering that day. Some results are instant, while others occur after a certain number of results. Some are windfalls, some are obstacles, some of them are just, well, weird. This is the Kismet Dice, the representative element of the fact that when you live on the road, nothing ever goes exactly to plan. For better, and for worse.

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This was meant to dip a toe into what I'll be doing in The River and the Road. My goal? An RPG system with rules that could fill a pamphlet, rather than a book, but with flavor and mechanics to keep things fresh, fun and an atmosphere to goof on with friends. This is my current writing focus, so expect more soon!