Dark Prophets
From AdamWiki
How it Should Work
Some design goals:
Players can establish facts freely when there is no opposition (that is, when all players are in agreement). Players can resolve deadlocks quickly when there is disagreement about the establishment of a new fact.
Players can create more than one character.
The game is self-propelling. That is, by playing the game, players naturally create and resolve conflicts and create story without a specific permanent GM. A GM-like role may exist but it is traded among players rapidly and easily.
Players are rewarded for those things that propel the story forward.
Random Notes
Each player controls one Prophet, defined by a God, described by a set of Commandments, and supported by a Flock. These are figurative terms of art, not literal gods and prophets, of course.
- Prophet = protagonist (perhaps antihero)
- God = thing that drives/controls/feeds the Prophet
- Commandments = tenets, rules that describe how the God operates
- Flock = supporting characters that follow the same God
Examples of Gods: Alcohol, Fame, Wealth, Control, Art, Glory, Honor.
No GM necessary. Each player takes a turn describing what he wants to accomplish and breaks it down into steps. Other players introduce complications from their Flock.
When a player introduces a plot arc, each player bids into it for screen time. Tie the screen time bid to narrative power.
Resolution is quick. Either a bidding war based on God aspects or the player can dice it. Once he's gambled and rolled the dice, he cannot use the bidding strategy. Divine Intervention is when a player calls the power of their God to change an outcome (bidding war).
Other thematic terms without a home yet: Pray/Prayer, Worship, Priest, Angel, Devil, Heretic, Prophecy, Idol.
Number of the "Best": if a player rolls six 6's, his character Ascends to Divinity (retired). This is more likely than it sounds because of reroll options.
Character Creation
Create a World
Yeah, you're not even a God yet, and we're asking you to create a world. You get help though. Work with your fellow players to figure out what world you'll play in. It can be anything and you don't need all the details yet, just an idea of the place where your stories are going to unfold.
You need to come to consensus with the other players so that you know how to make characters that fit into the same stories. It's too hard to get your 22nd Century alcoholic space marine character to interact with your buddy's Bronze Age stargazing shaman without some pretty twisted plot devices.
Not only do you need to figure out where you want to set stories, but it helps to have some idea what kind of stories you want to tell. Agree on a theme or a situation.
Examples:
- A futuristic cyberpunk world set in corporate Mexico. Characters are low VPs, technology experts, middle managers, and sales people all bent on climbing the corporate ladder at Nanosoft, the world's premiere biotech company.
- A gritty modern tale set in NYC. Characters are cops, detectives, and drug dealers.
- A mythical fantasy world with swords and sorcery. Characters are the apprentices of well-known wizards at the magical college.
Choose a God
What gives you strength and what do you aspire to become? A character's God is an ideal he pursues or something he aspires to control.
Some examples: Alcohol, Fame, Wealth, Control, Art, Glory, Honor, Temper, Technology, Sex.
No two players may choose the same God.
Write Down Three Commandments
Jehovah gave Moses ten. You can come up with three. Each of these Commandments should support the ideals of your God.
For example, if your God is Alcohol, your Commandments might be:
- Thou shalt drink.
- Thou shalt not pass up a drink.
- Thou shalt drink the best.
If your God is Wealth, your Commandments might be:
- Thou shalt get money.
- Thou shalt spend money on extravagant and fine things.
- Thou shalt not give away money.
Note: I need to put some teeth on this mechanic. It currently does not influence play.
Choose a Career
Just because you're a drunk or an entrepeneur doesn't mean you don't have a job. What do you do? Even if you're "between jobs" or down on your luck doesn't mean you don't have skills. What are you good at?
Examples of Careers are: Salesman, Middle Manager, Space Marine, Policeman, Sorcerer, Lawyer, Plumber, Farmer, Factory Worker, Truck Driver, Peasant Warrior, Hair Stylist, College Student.
Career suggests the kinds of things you can do.
Explain Your Situation
Describe how you got where you are now. Things could be just peachy at the start of the game if you want. Don't worry: that won't last. Explain what your goals are and how you plan to get them.
Assign Points to Traits
You have three traits: Wrath, Prophecy, and Career. These govern your character throughout the game. Each trait gets a rating from 1 to 5.
Wrath is your ability to call down the power of your God and use it for your own purposes and your responsibility to your God. Prophecy is your ability to make your dreams come true. Career is your ability to accomplish tasks related to your job skills and the level of your daily responsibilities. (Note: need a disadvantage for Prophecy.)
A 1 represents the smallest of ability and responsibilities. For example, a 1 Wrath means you have few responsibilities to your God but also have little power; a 5 Wrath means you have tons of Godlike power but also many responsibilities.
Distribute 8 points among those three traits. You must assign at least 1 point and no more than 5 points to each.
Each trait really has two scores: current score and maximum score. When you create the character, they're the same. During play, the current score will move around a lot but will never be more than the maximum score. Between sessions, you can increase the maximum score (sorta like adding on a room to your house) with the rewards you get from clever and lucky play.
Playing the Game
At the start of the game session, every character is off by himself doing the things he does in everyday life. Each player will take a turn advancing his character's goals. Every player starts the session with a number of Plot points equal to his Prophecy score (no more, no less). Represent the Plot points with poker chips because you'll be bidding them and trading them and shifting them around.
- Sidebar: Player Concensus
- Everything in this game depends on player concensus. That is, if there's any disagreement at all, you vote on it and you need anonymous consent to continue. To break deadlocks, any player can pay a chip to any other player to flip his vote. So if 5 people vote YES and 1 person votes NO, anyone can give the naysayer a chip and flip his vote to YES. That player then could pay a chip to flip his vote back to NO, and so on.
- Use these rules any time there's a disagreement about the rules or any time the rules call for player concensus.
Determine the order of turns by agreement or randomly. A turn goes like this:
1. Tell the group your character's plan.
When it's your turn, you're the Protagonist. You, the player, not your character.
Explain your end goal and how you plan to get there. Pick a reasonable-sized goal. Think "chapter," not "book." For example, the player of a corporate Marketing Director (God: Fame) at Nanosoft wants his character to get promoted to Vice President eventually. He decides he is going to do really well on his next project, the ad campaign for the latest gizmo called the Brainframe 5000.
Then you bid a certain number of Plot points. Take a number of Plot points (poker chips) from your character and put them in the Stakes pile. Stakes represent what the Protagonist has to gain or lose during this turn.
2. Let the other players fuck it all up.
The other players get to be the Antagonists. The players, not their primary characters.
They toss in plot twists from their Flock. A Flock is an imaginary pool of people, things, and ideas. Being imaginary, it is also bottomless; that is, your Flock is always full (to the limits of your twisted imagination). Players are encouraged to work on their Flock between games, but they can make stuff up on the fly, too.
To twist the plot, the Antagonist must ante up a number of Plot points to match the amount in the Stakes. That is, if the Protagonist has bid 5 Plot points to the Stakes, you must bid 5 of your own to be the Antagonist. These points go into the Stakes pile, too.
Only one player can be the Antagonist at any given time. Each twist must be resolved before another player can jump in. If more than one player wants to twist the plot at the same time, they must either amicably agree who gets to be the Antagonist, or they can bid Plot points for control. Whoever bids the most wins control and must pay the ante plus the winning bid amount -- put the Plot points into the Stakes pile.
3. Resolve the Plot
This is where you use dice (the normal six-sided kind you can find in casinoes, supermarkets, and even convenience stores).
The Protagonist figures out what he'll do to get around the plot twist and explains his plan to the group. Everyone agrees by majority consensus whether the Protagonist should use his character's Career or Wrath here (whichever is more appropriate to what he wants to do). Then decide by majority consensus whether the twist from the Antagonist's Flock should use Career or Wrath.
The Protagonist and Antagonist each roll a number of dice. How many? You get one die for each point of either Career or Wrath (depending on which is governing this plot). Roll that many dice. For each of the dice that show a 6, take one chip out of the Stakes and put it in your Reward pile.
Whoever rolled the most 6's that round gets to narrate. Don't conclude the story unless all the Stakes are gone. Weave part of an interesting story that will lead to the final conclusion.
After the narration, if there are still Stakes left, both sides roll again and the winner of that round narrates. Do this until there are no Stakes left. The final narration should explain who won overall, based on the total Rewards won this turn by each side. That is, you can win the last round of dice but still lose the turn (and thus not succeed at the goal you set for yourself).
4. Refresh Plot Points
If you want, you can take chips from your Rewards and put them into your Plot points. During any turn, you can move no more chips than your Prophecy score. There are good reasons not to move any points, though (see below).
5. Next Player
Figure out who goes next and play on. Do this until people get tired of playing.
6. Take a Break
All that playing is exhausting, to both the players and their characters. Characters get exhausted, too. That is, they tend to run out of Plot points and end up with a big pile of Reward points to spend.
First off, you can recuperate some of your unspent Plot points. Roll a number of dice equal to your Wrath or Career, whichever is lower. For every 6 that comes up, move an unspent Plot point to your Rewards pile. The rest of your unspent Plot points are discarded -- gone forever.
Next, you must satisfy your Career and Wrath. These are hungry beasts that must be fed. The higher the score, the hungrier they are. At the start of each break, your current scores in both traits drops to 0. Ouch! You must refill them with Rewards. You don't have to refill them all the way up but then you'll play the next game with diminished stats.
Advancement
Once both Wrath and Career are refilled to their maximums, you have the chance to raise one of your three traits (including Prophecy). Choose which one you want to increase (only one). Spend 5 Reward points and roll a die. If the roll is greater than the maximum score of the trait you're trying to increase, it goes up (increase both the maximum and current score). This caps maximum scores at 6 (unless Plot points are spent to influence the dice -- see below).
Any unspent Reward points stay in your Rewards pool till your next break.
Dice Mechanics
Most of the time when you want to resolve a plot, you just choose Wrath or Career and roll a number of dice equal to that trait's score. Each 6 that comes up grants you Rewards.
Bumps
You can spend Plot or Reward points after the roll to alter your dice. Each point spent increases, or "bumps," one die by one point. Spend as many Plot or Reward points as you like. If you roll 4, 4, 6 that would normally be one 6. You can spend 2 points to change one 4 to a 6 and make that 4, 6, 6 (two 6's). Four points would make it three 6's. The points go into the appropriate pile of your opponent. For example, if you're the Antagonist and you spend 2 Rewards on bumps, the spent chips go in the Protagonist's Rewards.
Generally, during play, there's no reason to bump a die higher than a 6 or to any number lower than 6 (bumping a 4 to a 5 doesn't get you anything). However, you can bump your roll during your Advancement stage during the break. In that case, if you need to raise a 5 Wrath to a 6, bumping a 4 to a 5 is just what you need.
The Number of the Best
The number of the beast is 666, but in this game the Number of the Best (yes, the best) is 666666. This requires you to be rolling 6 or more dice at a time and it only happens 1 in 46,656 times with 6 dice, so don't sweat it too much. (With 7 dice, it happens 1 in 7,776 times. With 8 dice, it happens 1 in 1,000 times. My math is probably bad though.)
If you ever roll six 6's (or higher) in a single roll (including bumps), you have to retire your character. He has ascended to divinity and is far too good for you to play. Give it up and make a new character.
