Another drawling from our Halloween one off 👻 one of my friends’ character died and ended up becoming a spectral wolf servant of the forest; I liked the idea of the visual and wanted to sketch something real quick hah

Since I am still chewing on the DIE Stapling post, I am going to do another about effort mechanics in ttrpgs because I am trying to write that Blasphemous inspired Trophy Gold hack (placeholder name: Penance). And one of the coolest mechanics for Trophy is its Risk Roll, which is basically an effort mechanic.

"But, Ampersand, what is an effort mechanic?" I hear you ask, dear mutual I am making up in my head. An effort mechanic allows you to reroll an action you have already attempted but failed or to get a bonus to a roll at the expense of some resource. Usually, that resource being the character's health. But it can also be something else like clues in an investigative game or even a narrative consequence (but that's usually called a Devil's Bargain).

The important part is that it gives a benefit but requires a sacrifice. And that's when the whole fanfare of psychoeconomics start. Because you need the sacrifice to be big enough to give the player pause and not use it every roll. And also you need the benefit to be significant enough to make it worth the risk and the expense. If properly adjusted, an effort mechanic can become a slow but sure spiral into the characters downfall.

Let's look at some examples!

Numenera is the first system I learn that had such a mechanic (but certainly was not the first ever). It is pretty straightforward in its implementation, too. You spend a fixed amount of the appropriate life pool and you get to reduce the difficulty of a task. Easy enough. But Numenera, being a tradgame as it is, the power creep upends any weight of the sacrifice. Once you level up enough, your pools become deep enough as to make effort something to just add to whichever skill roll you thought it needed a bit more oomph. This is not something wrong per se, but it can easily make your characters overly competent!

On the other hand, there's Dungeon Crawl Classics. DCC is a peculiar OSR game in that it is a really spiced up retroclone, wriggling DnD B/X ruleset to a point where it is almost unrecognizable. I am sure there are plenty effort mechanics peppered in the text, but I want to point out its magic system because I absolutely adore it. To be a wizard in DCC requires active dedication. That is because almost every spell has a writeup of about an A4's length, filled with the various effects a spell may have once the dice is rolled. And the effect can be wildly different from a roll of 5-10 to a roll of as high as 30 or more. There are many ways in which you can tweak your narrative positioning to get bonuses to a spell roll (components, helpers, magic foci, whatever), but when the die is cast and the result is just not good enough you still have a last chance: to sacrifice your own atribute values to get one last push that might be the difference between a proper spell and a fiasco. This is the main cause of withering of elder wizards: they have sacrificed too much in order to achieve the power they sought.

And then, there's Trophy. Both Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold have excellent effort mechanics baked directly into their ADN thanks to the masterful procedure that is the Risk Roll. These are games in which you are tempted first and consumed later by an evil forest. You have a really small ruin pool and once it is filled, you are lost to injury or its dark influence. You are also a destitute adventurer that needs to get any gold or face almost certain death. So you need to get shit done, you need to amass enough successes as to bring bread home and you need to survive the process (or try to, at least). And that's when the Risk Roll comes and lures your with the most satisfying effort mechanic I've ever seen. You can always make a reroll, adding an extra die to your pool to boot. But if those extra dice, dark dice, ever become the highest ones, you automatically mark ruin. You get your success, yes. But you become closer to losing yourself. It exactly hits the spot between actually worth it and inescapably dooming the character.

Obviously not all games need to be about losing oneself to fate or circumstance, but I feel an effort mechanic very much pushes the narrative in that direction. You are sacrificing yourself, in order to achieve your goals.

And I think that's a quite powerful narrative device.

Andreas (OC)

I played in a really fun narrative horror game called Trophy Dark! I absolutely love this game and I think a lot more people should check it out since it is so easy to get into and everybody gets to have a say in the story the group tells!

💡🔮

💡 A game that inspired my own design or creative practice.

The first time I stumbled into Powered by the Apocalypse games truly was an eye-opener for me. The sheer amount of "you can do that???" was unparalleled. Technically, I think the first PbtA game I messed around in was Dungeon World, but I don't want to talk about Dungeon World lol. So let's go talk about Masks instead.

The way Masks uses the emotional states of the characters as the "stats" and how fluid and shifting those emotional states/stats are really hammered home how one can interweave the themes of the game (in this case, emotionally volatile young super heroes) into the mechanics!

I don't think I ever really looked back after that point.

🔮 One of my favorite memories playing a game by someone else.

This is probably, 95% of all the games I run/play honestly, so mostly all my game memories could go here lol.

Time to talk about my little carcass boy, Timothee Chalamet!

My good friend @hydnelllum was running the delightful Trophy Dark incursion, A Warm and Pleasant Hum, and I described my character as "Timothee Chalamet, but covered in dirt" or something like that. What followed was me putting this waifish man enthusiastically through every possible bad thing we encountered (the best was to play Trophy Dark honestly) throughout the entirety of the incursion. This included the moment that earned him the carcass boy moniker, where some bee-grub-monster-things were sniffing the characters out, so to mask my scent our little man Tim-Tim crawled into a deer carcass. Just, really got in there and rolled around. It was horrible!

He was a nasty little man! And probably would have started a bee-cult had he not maxed out Ruin and turned into a horrible grub-monster. Truly delightful! Just, writhing around in the horror and muck. A+.

i just got my copy of token by gabriel robinson (trollhands on twitter) and it's STUNNING!! everyone go get yourself a copy from glowing roots press! (gorgeous cover art by @sheydgarden)

First time playing Trophy Dark. The courtesan assassin of our party started getting some strange mutations in her mouth and ended up giving a surprise french kiss to the disowned heiress who was asking her about it.

Season 1 odds Continuity Errors may be ocer, but we will be live this Sunday at 5 pm EDT/2 pm PDT playing Trophy Dark for our Halloween special!

My character for a friends Trophy Dark game, Devil Aim For Me!

His name is Vernon Moss, and he’s a disgraced apothecarist drifter

Finished art of Vero, a beast-bitten hedge from the ttrpg Trophy Dark

Trophy Campaign Update:

Today the Forge had another episode of Trophy, with Danny as GM. Joining us again as players were Steve, Johnny, Justin and Nick! Since this is a Patreon only show when released as podcast, I won't go into specifics but I would like to talk about the experience I have when I join in the Livestream.

First of all, anyone can join the stream chat. Though it's a Patreon only show later, it's free for everybody to drop by on Twitch to take a look! I'll add their usual link to the bottom of the post.

A Dustfire Media Livestream is an absolute riot of a time. Watching people make their jokes live helps add a feeling of realism and inclusivity, like what I'd imagine going to a live comedy show would be like. They're hilarious above table and in character these players know how to be diverse with who they represent, and yet still so very them.

What makes the Patreon episode streams that bit more special is most likely the Devil's Bargain mechanic. Usually, like with the streams for The Professionals (as far as I know, I'm dead to the world when those streams are live because it's 1-3am in my time zone), the GM can present a consequence that must be accepted by the player if a player wants an extra dice. A trade off of sorts to help progress the game with certain actions. If they don't accept, they don't get a bonus dice to the roll.

With the Trophy streams however, a Devil's Bargain is open to ANYONE to suggest - other players, or chat. So we the viewers get to add in our own potential consequences to the plot. This makes for some hilarious twists and turns, trust me.

Another thing in particular I enjoy specifically is talking with chat about the characters and story events themselves. If (SOMEHOW) you're not a Patreon, then there's likely someone in chat more than happy to give you a quick summary of what you've missed so you can join in like the rest of us. Or even if you just have internet connection issues! (Like me! Lagged pretty bad so a pal in chat helpfully posted the important points I'd missed in the 20 seconds of buffering I experienced).

I also find I learn new words, or even new ways to say certain words thanks to differences in upbringing/accent. Like the word Cuirass (Sorry Justin calling you out here for this particular one since it stuck out to me!) Justin was pronouncing it as "Coo-rass", whereas I've always thought it was pronounced "Cure-ass". I've not really heard the word spoken before however so now I'm curious! Is it just a Justin thing, or is that really how you're meant to say it?

I might have digressed a bit there, but the Dustfire never fails to deliver on great cliffhangers and full-depth stories leaving people eager to know what's happening next. Whether it's a one shot base being worked on and brought to life, or a completely new story created with a rulebook of any game, I'm yet to be dissatisfied with any of their content. Not kidding, it's all amazing!! Doesn't matter who is running the game either, all of them tell incredible stories.

Final note, and weirdly enough the reason I started typing this post; one major change between this session of Trophy and the last is that last session the game was Trophy Dark, whilst this one upgraded/morphed into Trophy Gold. The story is still the same (well, as much as we can tell for it!) And the Dustfire guys have assured us everything will make more sense in the end - alas it's only one episode a month!

Maybe if we get more Patreon participants they can stream it more... Come be a White Lotus Agent with me! More agents against the forces of evil is always a wonderful time ♡

I hope you enjoy your time with them as much as I do. Please find a link to both their Twitch page, and their website below (bonus - they've got merch too!)

Me having fun in a horror game even though my character is descending into madness and is almost certainly going to die:

Meet Nima, (Arcane and Religious) Historian and Treasure Hunter. Doomed and deserving of it. Queen of the Tweed vest and pleated skirt

Some friends and I played a Halloween one off from Trophy Dark; wanted to draw a little comp of our tragic party heading towards their demise 👻

Burial Crypts of the Wizard-Kings Now Available

Burial Crypts of the Wizard-Kings is now available to buy on itch. This is an Incursion for Trophy Dark in which the characters are delving into the tombs of ancient rulers. They will probably not return alive; they definitely will not return unscarred.

View On WordPress

Come join tomorrow! Seriously, it'll be a blast. Christine (of @unexploredcast fame) is going to scare the shit out of me. there's gonna be a train. Good shit.

I'll reblog with a link a few minutes before we go live