Building the Battle Jacket (Part 3)

I’ve been slowly writing and testing out my own OSR Roleplaying Game I call Battle Jacket. This is its development blog. [Part 1 Here] [Part 2 Here]

Recap: I set out to make my own OSR game by stealing the Mörk Borg rules-set and adding a touch of homebrew to it. I was going to design a small zine, sell a few copies to my friends, and then be done with it. Then the project began to take on a life of its own…

One of the suckiest things about being a creative is that the best thoughts come at the worst times. I had a long day at work. The drawing board fought me all day. My domestic duties at home took up the remainder of my time and energy. I lay in my bed positively whooped when inspiration struck suddenly and angrily. I pulled out my phone and sleepily scrawled the following note:

For those not in a position to read the image, I typed out:
Demon Gods:
Quantaar
Cephelogaar
Chammakkaar
Shamrazhnagaar
and
Timothy

It was one of those moments where the joke comes almost fully formed. It is an old old joke format, but I find it tried and true, and furthermore it makes me laugh every time. Six Demon Gods, all with very demony sounding names, except for one painfully generic name. And who is the worst of all of these Demon Gods? I’m sure you can guess.

Also, these names constitute the first lines to an official style-guide.

What is a “Style Guide”?

An indispensable document that can take many forms. I am most familiar with style-guides used in animation, comics, and writing (usually for TV). They exist to keep all the creatives of a project working on the same page, and more importantly, to keep the internal world of the creative work consistent. In animation, style-guides are usually created by character designers and animation directors so that story-boarders and animators know what creative decisions have been made, and how to keep them consistent.

Style guides for writing include notes about characters, motivations, over-arching plot, what the story is actually about, and most importantly, the rules of the world.

Even when working alone, a style-guide is hugely important both visually and writing-wise. Ever read a comic, a novel, or watch a show and a main character does something very out of character? Hate it when you think you have a horror mystery figured out, but the main creator seems to keep changing things up? The lore gets bigger and bigger, the plot gets more convoluted and makes less sense? That’s what happens when a writer does not create or adhere to their own style-guide. The work ultimately devolves from an interesting/compelling story into schlock. The creator is no longer telling you a story, they’re just holding your attention, and they’ll continue making things up just to keep it. (Think Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Walking Dead, or Lost.)

For writing, style guides are usually a short bullet pointed list of rules. In general, the bigger work, the fewer the rules, but the more rigidly the rules must be adhered to. One of the most famous examples comes from the legendary Chuck Jones’s guide on Wile E. Coyote. Chuck was one of the best animators, designers, and directors of his day, but it was his discipline that made him a timeless legend.

The initial power of any creative work comes from a compelling concept, but the staying power and most true gauge of quality comes from the discipline of sticking to the style-guide.

As a brief aside, comics and illustration have a bit of wiggle-room in how closely the first design is adhered to. It is expected that the shapes will mature as the artist continues to draw the characters more. In animation, the character design is law and no deviations can be tolerated. Deviating from the character design in animation is very risky and called “breaking model.” Tex Avery, the creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and more, was the master of breaking model, but his mastery was in choosing his moments.

Before we begin:
Always adhere to the Golden rule of gaming.

The rules of any game are but guidelines. When the game is in the players’ hands, it is their game. Players and GMs are encouraged to take any and every liberty to maximize the fun for all at the table.

With the demon-god names written, the guide begins to write itself. The existence of these quasi-deities suggests a great deal about the world. There are 6 rulers of an Underworld, which means players exist in a corporeal world above it, which then suggests the existence of an Overworld above the players.

Rule #1: The demon gods are selfish, petty, secretive, and vain. They are always thwarted by their own in-fighting more-so than anything else. True for their followers as well. (PCs and NPCs alike)

The Living World is huge and full of monsters, mystery, and magic. It is not always hopeless, but it is always horrible.

Rule #2: There are no dedicated healers in this game.

There is an Overworld. A single deity who is also many dwells there. This deity is peace, love, joy, and kindness. The people of the Living World call it: The Kind One.

Rule #3: Nobody likes The Kind One. Followers of The Kind One (called “Kind Fellows”) are cheery and wholly insufferable nerds! (They are the only characters who are capable of doing any healing.)

Rule #2 comes with a caveat. There are some players out there who really want to play a healer, or perhaps need someone in the party to play the healer for whatever reason. If this makes the game more fun for the people at the table, Gaming Golden Rule applies.

I don’t want to force players, or worse the GM, to come up with healer lore and rules on the fly. So while no one in the game is a dedicated healer, I have provided a method by which an NPC can fulfill the role. To cling closer to the GGR, I decided, to include rules for playing as a Kind Fellow, but to stick to my “No Healers” rule, I decided to disguise these rules as bits of world lore and hide them away from the character creation section. The rules/guidelines to include a healer for the players that want one are present if they are wanted, but ignorable if they are not wanted. Needle threaded.

The rule of having no healers in the game put me at a cross-roads of sorts. I wrote the rule instinctively as it came to me, but I had such trouble justifying why. In wrestling with the justification, I came up with the most important style rule that will decide how the rest of the game is written, and what reality the rule mechanics must reinforce.

In this world there is much violence, death, and destruction, but there is also some hope. While the players will not be great heroic figures like in DnD, they will not be as wretched and hopeless as the player characters in Mörk Borg. In this game, players will be the outcasts of their society without enough resources or friends to live for very long. However, they will be strong enough to be dangerous to their enemies, and lucky enough to bring at least some of that danger to bear. Therefore:

Rule #4: Every cool thing in this game will be awesome and awful in equal measure.

Cool-ass character classes to save the day

At this point, I now have some interesting style rules, and a game I might be interested to try, but it remained a Mörk Borg plagiarism save for a different supernatural pantheon and a bit of homebrew rules. It hadn’t yet clicked that I am trying to make GWAR or Dethklok in game form. That came when it was time to write out Character Classes.

What would set this apart? What would give me the cartoonish ultra-violent, yet joyful (for the players) world I am trying to make? What does it need to look different from most the other dark fantasy worlds? I asked myself this while drawing my comic and listening to the original Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard.

That’s it! Not so much dark fantasy, but more Sword and Sorcery. Magic is ever present and powerful, but few know how to really use it to great effect. Well developed nation-states or similar are not a thing yet, but Duchies, Small Kingdoms, and Tribal Chiefs dot every landscape. Technologically, I want to steer away from the High Medieval Period where Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and DnD seem to live. Dark Age kingdoms like the ones of Saxon England (think post romans, but pre-conqueror).

Alas! That is how I always envisioned Mörk Borg to be. Did I just plagiarize some more?! DAMN IT! Back to square one I suppose… …How is this world supposed to look?!

I want monsters. I want demons. I want evil sorcerers and mysterious witches of every stripe. I want funny and violent anti-heroes. I want a low-technology , but high magic with terrible consequences. I want a world that can look like any savage land the players want to play in.

I went on the hunt for some inspiration, and came up with these:

He-Man reimagining by Jerzy Drozd.

Bits of the Heavy Metal movie.

I discovered that I really like futuristic stuff stuck into fantastical backgrounds.

I really appreciate crazy nonsense for sake of fun. I think that may be the very reason I am here and making a game. The relentless pursuit of fun. The unbridled imagination of an adolescent child!

But, again, low technology world… …Also, how would I square futuristic laser guns and crap into a low medieval world?

Ya know, things are kinda the future now aren’t they? I mean The Neuromancer was a hugely forward thinking and relevant novel for decades. Now, parts of that reality are here, the rest is just around the corner, and we are already bored with it. So, what if our modern day is a far flung past for the players?

A great cataclysm befell the whole earth at once restarting all of human civilization. The “Modern Day” for the players is 1,000 years in our future. Society has returned to a mostly medieval period, but the whole world is all mixed up so players can play in an Egyptian style empire in one session, fight bad guys on something like the Mongolian Steppe in the next, and then kill a lesser demon in an approximation of Saxon England to end the campaign!

What was the great cataclysm that wrecked the whole earth at once in the 21st century?

What would GWAR do?

Someone finally broke the 7th seal or some damn thing, the earth cracked open and demons of the underworld came pouring out plunging the world into darknessssssss! Oh, also, all the demon magic and stuff spilling out into the earth mutates people. We’ll steal a cool name for these people. We’ll call them “Morlocks.” METAL!!!

So, our futuristic modern day devices will be ancient relics to the player characters. How will they still work? When the earth cracked, magic became real and all of the objects and devices of the “Before Times” became enchanted. Yeah, I can dig that. Sends a message. We are here for fun, and a lot of it. This is a game world where good sense will go to die.

Won’t all the old relics be all busted up? I mean, the tech things existing at all is awesome, but how is it also awful? (Rule #4) The tech is all busted up. Some of it is found intact and in immaculate shape, but these are like the Excaliburs of the Ancient Relics. The rest are all busted up, but repairable. However, they still break all the time. Whose job is it to find, fix, and figure out these ancient technologies?

My first character class: The Technomancer - Wizard of all things Tech
Fixer of things, knower of things, and entirely clueless about people in general. If this was a character class, what kind of tech would they fight with? Old recovered VideoGame Consoles! They can wield their controllers like wizards with wands.

What other bits of tech get a lot of use. What other kind of player am I looking for?

When I listen to some of my most favorite heavy metal riffs, sometimes they feel punishing. As though I am being beaten, but I’m not getting beat. What if musical instruments actually had the power to lierally beat down a room full of people? It would have to be wielded by someone with great skill, talent, or both. Aren’t electric guitars bits of tech? Wouldn’t the cataclysm have enchanted them as well?

Enter my second character class: The Musicanist or “Musomancer”
Magic user that can only cast using their instrument, but whose instrument is nearly worthless without a musicanist. It takes an hour of practice per day to recharge all musicanist spells.

What about drums? They’re literally the lowest tech thing in civilization. Peoples develop drum music before they learn to sing. In fact, in eastern cultures, the drums were considered the only instrument to have their own discreet spirit, because that is what the empty chamber inside the drum constituted blah blah blah… …Any and all drums are enchanted too. In fact, because drums are usually the loudest damn things on stage, spells cast on a drum or drums will be even more powerful. That’s awesome, but how is it also awful? (Rule #4) I know from experience that if I am getting practice at my drums, no one in my neighborhood is getting rest. Therefore, if the party’s musicanist is a drummer, they can rest, but their practice makes it impossible for their party-mates to take a rest. Everybody hates you because you’re a loud obnoxious drummer who won’t stop tapping on all the things!

Yeah, this isn’t hitting close to home at all…

That’s it for now. Scroll down to see some of the other notes I made. They are rough and out of context. Enjoy!

Next Time: Art, graphic design, and a downloadable copy of my first draft!

Thanks for reading,
-Gabe D.

Building the Battle Jacket (Part 2)

I’ve been slowly writing and testing out my own OSR Roleplaying Game I call Battle Jacket. This is its development blog. [Part 1 Here]

Recap: I have been playing roleplaying games since I was eight years old. I love the concept. D&D is too much math for me to wrap my head around. I was introduced to Mörk Borg and the rest of the OSR which really inspired me. Now to begin work on my own game, but where do I start?

In philosophy we ask, “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”
In RPG’s we ask, “what comes first, the rules or the world?”

I’m a very artsy creative guy who is big on story and very weak on mathematical systems, so it is surprising that I actually began my writing of Battle Jacket with the rules-set before the world-lore.

Originally, this was not conceived of as a long term project to pour my heart into. My idea was to straight-up cannibalize the Mörk Borg rules-set and re-skin it in a strictly lip-stick job. It was going to be a quick fun little zine thing that I knock out for fun and move on. The only problem I had with the Mörk Borg rules were that they were slightly too stripped down. There are only 4 stats in the character sheet. I love the bare bones nature, but this is stripped one too far for me. 

The Presence stat, I think, is too prominent. It makes up about half the rolls in almost any game I run. Furthermore, I believe in a fundamental difference between Intelligence and Wisdom both in-game and in life. Thus in the games I ran, I tested out changing Presence to Intelligence, and adding a Wisdom stat to the character sheet. The thought being, this would open up a new area of strengths and weaknesses in the party making the players more dependent on one another, and making the game more flavorful. Failing a Wis roll even though a character has a high Int is always funny. The reverse is equally funny. My players seem to enjoy it as well.

Wisdom vs. Intelligence; What’s the diff?
(Because you are in such a hurry.)

The way I understood this in life as a youngster was:

Intelligence describes the things you know. High intelligence means you know more things, and you learn them faster than other people.

Wisdom describes how well you use the knowledge you already have to your advantage. Or how well you recognize luck, and take advantage of it.

Forest Gump is an example of high Wis and low Int.

Almost every “Genius” doctor in a medical show is an example of high Int and low Wis.
Also German Shepherds. Smartest dogs in the world, but somehow still dumb as hell!

In game terms the distinction serves two purposes: Game Mechanics and Character Development. Mechanically, Int describes a character’s ability to know things. Wis describes a character’s ability to know people. In terms of Character Development, is your character the oblivious, but brilliant nerd? Or the Street Smart dullard who can’t read a clock, but definitely knows what time it is.

I introduced this distinction to my players in a few one-shot sessions of Mörk Borg to see how well they worked with the players. Roll Int to observe objects, search for traps, or know languages. Roll Wis to spot a liar or size up an NPC. The results were the players understood the strengths, weaknesses, and over all make-up of the character they were playing a bit better than before. Functionally it meant rolling dice on different stats instead of relying on one stat that the players had less control over.

In short, the change worked, so I wrote it down and kept it.

My only other gripe with the rules I was plagiarizing, was that characters were too weak. In Mörk Borg the players are playing poor discarded wretches who have no chance. Even if they survive today, tomorrow they will not. Rule-wise there are two mechanics to keep players alive long enough to have a chance at a decent game. The first is an armor rule-set that automatically reduces the damage characters suffer. The second is Omens.

I like the idea of armor reducing damage as opposed to increasing an armor-class, in principle, but in practice both I and my players are CONSTANTLY forgetting the armor stat. In short, the mechanic works in terms of keeping characters alive longer, but only if they have armor at all, and then only if they remember they have it in the first place. 

I describe Omens as acting like in-game mulligans. You can use them to make re-rolls, automatically reduce damage, and a few other things. Full description in the image below.

At first, I loved Omens. They weren’t too many, and really did the trick of giving otherwise hopeless player characters a chance of living a bit longer, but they got less fun over time. My players kept forgetting that they had Omens at all. Or they would remember they had one or two, but forgot what they could do and had to constantly look up their options. They also kept forgetting how many they had. Too powerful and just slightly too complex to use without interrupting the flow of gameplay.

Hardcore gamers who read that will be flummoxed, I’m sure, that such a relatively simple mechanic is so easily forgotten and so difficult to internalize, but the thing to remember is, most players aren’t used to having a small trove of codified mulligans. I’m not used to tracking so many stats as a GM. Just one more layer of complexity standing in the way of imagination and game-play.

Role playing games only work if the stakes are right. If characters are nigh-invulnerable, the stakes are too low, because they won’t die. If characters are too weak, the stakes are too low again because characters becomes disposable.

My solution: All player characters roll and extra D4+1 and add the number to their existing hit points. This allows them to live long enough to have a fighting chance, but not so long that the player gets too precious.

These rule changes were tried verbally a few times in a few games, and I was able to test their efficacy that way, but world building is a different story. 

As a writer, I like to keep my first drafts to myself. I need to give my ideas time to percolate and bounce off each other in my thick little noggin before I can do anything about them. As an artist, it is lovely because I can allow myself to daydream, percolate, and talk to myself all day while I am working away at the drawing board. Unfortunately, nothing was coming to me too distinctly for a bit. All of my ideas were to inject more jokes into the already existing framework of ultra-grimdark fantasy. Essentially, just play the game as it is with a few home-brew rules. Not worth wasting anyone’s time with. I almost abandoned the project here. However, the idea proved persistent. I started making small notes on my phone.

The first note I wrote was the names of each of the Demon Gods. Which meant my game had nameable knowable deities of a kind as well as a mythical underworld. A mythical underworld suggests the existence of a corporeal world that player characters exist in, as well as the possibility of an Overworld. One idea begets another, as it were, and they started to coalesce into a central theme. 

All of the creatures, characters, and classes I thought of and doodled were all the sort of stuff that a metalhead in high school would doodle in his notebook when he was supposed to be paying attention in algebra class. Naturally, I was that kid, so the ideas started feeling more and more like I was returning to roots of a kind. 

Mörk Borg was described as Heavy Metal in RPG form. I was discouraged because what I was putting together could be described as the same thing, but then I thought of Army of Darkness.  The cartoonishness. The silliness. The marks that I believed Mörk Borg had missed.

Pelle and Johan had indeed made Heavy Metal Music in RPG form, but what they made was Swedish Black Metal (the best kind of Black Metal). I wanted cartoonish ultra-violence! I wanted gratuitous geysers of blood and guts. I wanted jokes woven in the very fabric. I wanted to make GWAR!

Next Time:
Actually writing out the damn thing! (Version 1.0)

Thanks for reading,
-Gabe D.

Building the Battle Jacket (Part 1)

[For the past year and change, I have been slowly writing/designing my own rules-light OSR role playing game: Battle Jacket. This is a record of its development.]

Part One: Obligatory Origin Story

My first game of D&D was when I was 8 years old. My middle brother got the Player’s Handbook. This was 1994. AD&D 2nd edition. The one with THAC0. He roped my sister and I into a game and ran us through a small encounter.

The “true concept” of what a role playing game is remains under discussion, but the concept for us at this tender age was easy: 

• Fun with friends and imagination, sharing an imaginary reality that we all shape together in real-time. 

• It is a game of Let’s Pretend using dice as arbiter and collaborator. Awesome.

• This game exists in a reality with swords, armor, magic, and monsters. More Awesome.

• You can use funny voices and really ham it up while you play. Sold! 

There was a fatal flaw for me personally, the rules. There were too many. What there was seemed too convoluted, and they required too much math for a guy like me. If I was going to play, but not constantly ask the DM for clarifications (or be able to DM it myself) I would need a rule system that was much more streamlined, less mathy, and require more imagination. Lucky for me, this desire is very prevalent in today’s TTRPG community. Enter the OSR.

OSR: Acronym that stands for “Old School Revolution,” or “Old School Revival.” 

Broadly, it means a return fantasy roleplaying games to a rule system and feel more along the lines of AD&D 1st ed. or its immediate precursors: B/X D&D. What makes this trend so invigorating for me is that with lighter rules, imagination becomes heavier. For me, that is exchanging a weakness for a strength. A more boring quality with a more fun one. Another much enjoyed side-effect of more imagination is that more game designers can design a variety of games with a new variety of mechanics, moods, and world building. Variety is indeed the spice of life!

My very first introduction to this brave old world was a spiked flail to the face in a bright yellow hardcover called Mörk Borg.

Written, designed, and illustrated by a pair of Swedes (Pelle Nilssen and Johan Nohr) Mörk Borg is described as an RPG that is “rules light and heavy everything else.” It has won multiple prestigious awards and garnered much love, attention, and fandom. Not least of which from myself.

(Fun Fact: My cousin, who introduced me to my wife, introduced me to this game as well. The dude has NEVER steered me wrong.)

Mechanically, Mörk Borg strips the rules of a typical fantasy TTRPG to the absolute bone. Only four stats in a character’s stat block. The rules for combat fit on one digest sized page with plenty of room for art. The summary of all of the game’s rules fit on two digest sized pages. A copy of the rules with all fluff, art, and lore stripped out clocks in at around 50 digest pages. In these pages are rules for the game, random items/qualities tables, character classes, and a bestiary of possible enemies. Easy to read, simple to understand, mostly intuitive, elementary math with no companion charts, and easily repeated for new players. It checks all my boxes with style!

While the rules are light, the tonality of the game is very heavy. The broad strokes are of a  typical medieval fantasy that is grimdark to the Nth degree. The world is literally ending. Everything and everyone left in it is wretched and horrible, the players included. For players, death is likely, success is not.

The way I like to describe it to new players:

“Once upon a time there were amazing heroes with cool armor, enchanted weapons, and books filled with bitchin’-ass spells. 

That time is gone!

Those heroes are dead. 

You are what is left.

The weapons they left behind are nicked, busted, improvised, or all three. The armor they left has been stripped off those heroes’ corpses. Wrecked, and mended so many times they barely resemble what they once were. The spell books wizards spent their lifetimes writing and collecting have been torn apart. The individual disparate pages have been sold, exchanged, and used as magic scrolls. Only people who can read can cast these spells, but because none of them have training, the spells have little guarantee of efficacy, and the price for magical failure is dire!”

I can not fully describe how compelling I find Mörk Borg as both a game and a concept.  A full game with potential as expansive and flavorful as any of the big ones, but in such haiku-like simplicity that it fits in a single digest book. A thing I previously thought impossible.

The book itself is an art piece that I will treasure for years to come. Johan Nohr is a graphic designer of quality with a distinct style. When it came time to put together the look and feel for this passion project, Johan took himself off the leash and ran with every one of his instincts breaking every graphic design rule pounded into me back in art school. The man knows exactly what he is doing, and is unafraid to take risks. A true artist, if I may be so pretentious. The result is a unique work in a unique style that can only be imitated, but never duplicated. (and good gravy, so many have tried!)

If there is a flaw to be found, it is that the text and world building of the game is evocative more so than explanatory. Pelle Nillson’s writing does an excellent job of describing and hinting in broad strokes about the world, but writes close to the edge of exposition without ever crossing it. It is a delicate dance for any writer to achieve, and Pelle does it with aplomb. However, for nerds like me, the evocative writing doesn’t scratch my insatiable hunger for lore. 

As a writer myself, I feel as though I have been given a lovely and elaborate writing prompt. I can launch a thousand sessions, one-shots, and even multiple campaigns based on the material provided. However as a player, a GM, or even just a casual reader, I want so much more than is given.

In an interview, Pelle and Johan stated that they tried to make Army of Darkness in TTRPG form. I distinctly remember thinking, Gents, if that was your goal, you missed the mark!

Army of Darkness is an over the top tongue in cheek comedy of errors with chainsaw antics, an army of the undead, and one-liners cheesed to perfection. In contrast, Mörk Borg is a rusty dagger and a cruel smile from rotten teeth. It’s over the top and tongue in cheek, it has jokes aplenty, but sometimes the punchline is simply, “Isn’t that awful? Bwahahahaha!” I heard once that Swedish humor is way darker than most American humor. This work seems to bear that out, but Army of Darkness is American humor to a T. 

At least that’s my crackpot theory.

This compelled me to imagine what Mörk Borg would be like if it actually was in the style of Army of Darkness. What would that look like?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the result would look similar to, yet nothing at all like, Mörk Borg. It would be it’s own thing.

It would be easy, I thought. I can just re-skin these kickass rules with different lore, and maybe change a thing or two. I have a bunch of ink drawings in my sketch books that I can use. (I doodle heavy metal weirdness all the time.) My very own stock art. Easy-Peasy!

I started doing a lot more day-dreaming, some sporadic writing, and good bit more reading. “Maybe change a thing or two,” turned in to “maybe a few more.” Then some more…

It’s been hard work, but some of the most fun I have had as a writer/artist.

Thus, I wanted to share it in the hope that this is fun for you too.

—Next Time: What comes first? Lore, or rules system?