Lose Some: Competition in Role-Playing Games

I'd like to thank the stalwarts and luminaries who I have consulted in making this post. I have played in domain games with each of them, and hoped to mitigate the narrow bound of one writer's subjective experience. Thank you to Bamzolino of the GLoG discord server, Primeumaton of The Madman's Menagerie, Josie of Occultronics, Wes of Pangur Ban Collective, and Mergo-Kan of A Sense of Immersion.

A PC in the default pose. From TSR's Birthright

The standard advice for adventure games is to prohibit or carefully limit player characters acting against each other. In your standard D&D games, the PCs are assumed to be largely working towards the same goals, acting as a team. Fighting between PCs is often a source of real-life discord.

In some non-standard D&D games, player characters are expected to act against each other. I've played in and run several domain-play games, where players take on the role of princes and principalities, and challenge each other in the realm of war, ideology, and competition. I've come to realize that the changes required in player mindset is easy to underestimate. Players still feel angry or hurt when the competition comes, even if it is the explicit premise of the game. Sometimes it feels like they're throwing elbows, and the feeling of going against other players is drastically different from the feeling of contending with NPC foes. I've thought a lot about why this is, the best practices for players, and how games can better fit the competitive style.

PVP Brain

I call the affliction of unreasonableness, tension, and acerbity that comes from this kind of competition "PVP Brain". Even someone who signs up for a game of intrigue and violence might keep their normal roleplaying mindset. They may not internalize that their character is probably going to lose a lot more often than they're used to if they play more common adventure games. 

If you're accustomed to winning most violent encounters, treating most others as setbacks in which you regroup and go win the rematch, and consider the remainder, in which you get fucking murdered, as the worst possible failure. But in competitive games, you lose half the time. You build something up and might lose it. If your PC dies in a normal adventure game, the collective enterprise of the party chugs on and you join it with a new character. If your PC dies in a competitive game, maybe your killer is sitting in your throne deciding which of your retainers with funny voices and charming personalities get to live and die, and maybe the grain of your fields is going into their silos rather than yours.

When PVP Brain sets in, the DM is often one of the first casualties. Players become more likely to request as many mechanical bonuses as possible, come up with every possible mechanical obstacle for their foes, argue the fairness of the application of all of this, and generally behave worse than they ever would in a cooperative adventure game. They may start angle-shooting outrageously. Things which are normally treated like "flavor" or "fluff", any piece of the narrative that players have control over, may be suborned to the self-glorifying power of PVP brain.

On average, every player in even a mildly competitive game is losing way more often and way more keenly than even a moderately lethal OSR adventure game. It's hard to know how that feels if you're not accustomed to it, and agreeing to play in such a game is often not enough.

This is most keen in domain games where you have a single PC like in most adventure games. I've played in games where each player is a rotating cast unto themselves, like a royal dynasty. I've also played games where each player represents the entire domain unto themselves-- playing as France rather than its prime minister, for instance. Games with distributed characters or entities for players to control are less susceptible to PVP Brain if players keep in mind that the death of a beloved character is often closer to HP damage than the scary failure state it is in adventure games. Losing members of your dynastic can be something that is inevitable, to be avoided as much as possible but not to be flinched from, and not to be considered as a sign that you necessarily did anything wrong.

(Some say that in their adventure games combat is a failure state, but we're being for real here.)

Consider the incentives your domain system offer. Many reward consistently turtling up, building up your holdings, and risking as little as possible because advancement can be done on ones' own while competition is risky and destructive.

Art by Reneford. From the Realm.

Because of instincts and norms players may have developed in adventure games, many are hesitant to instigate conflict. They may enjoy making the sort of character who is wild and dangerous, but often their eyes are bigger than they're stomach. They have to go to someone who's just enjoying the game their own way, say "I'm being the bad guy at you," and somehow not flinch when the targeted PC (not even necessarily the player) says "Hey quit it, that's a dick move," Let's assume your players have an inborn real-life instinct to be susceptible to reasonable requests not to fuck with people. It's a rare player who knows ahead of time how much to dim that instinct for in-game chatter, at least once you age out of the innocent sociopathy of high school.

For this reason, the campaign and the system should probably have markers to signify that conflict is a normal state of play, and encouraging players to instigate it. I've seen games where you are mechanically rewarded for starting— and even for losing— wars, games where there's an explicitly normal non-villainous form of raiding you can undertake, games where many players' domain holdings are mingled with others' lands and their population is already raring to use that as an excuse to conquer a bit more.

Generally, these incentives aren't enough! Almost every player I know does everything in their power to avoid aggression. I say get experimental! Make it so your yearly taxes come exclusively from raiding, and specify whose peasants are getting the short end of the stick. Make it so you don't actually declare war, it automatically comes as a fait accompli when multiple players double down on trying to influence an area. Make it so there's fewer domains than there are players, and control is a game of musical chairs. Ooh, ooh, make it so when two domains are close, one will gradually become the subsidiary of the other, and the rulers must jockey to see who comes out on top. Make it so players must choose between types of conflict rather than between conflict and cooperation. Cooperation is often so strong anyway. The more the game creates conflict, I believe the less people can apply their mismatched previously learned mindsets, and the less PVP brain can harsh the vibe.

(One of my beta readers reminded me that their home group is incredibly competitive, and that they have no issue being induced to freak up and wreck each other. My advice won't strictly apply to such natural talents.)

My greatest success so far for a competitive game was a Trojan War-style scenario. It was explicitly framed as a game where the red team was going to end the game defeating and sacking the home of the blue team. Much of the game was commanding soldiers, and when rival PCs met, their fights were resolved in a single opposed die roll. Beating the enemy by any reasonable margin killed them. The first time one PC killed another, the player apologized anyway! When the city was captured, the bloodthirsty commander of the victorious army gave them theretofore unhoped-for merciful terms. Even when the game is about killing each other and war, players will try to make things easy on each other. It probably helped that the players were divided into teams, so they got to have friends to cooperate with who were okay with them aggressing against others (on the rival team).

You certainly don't need to stamp that out as a DM, but you should keep in mind that there's no way to push them overboard towards being obliged to be more competitive than they want to. PVP Brain, and other things I want to cover later, can make players hyper-aggressive, but not in the way you might want. I suggest that it comes from the wound of the wrong mindset applied to competitive games, and is not simply the correct mindset for a very competitive game.

The Terms of Battle

In adventure games, PCs are often capable of extreme and total war against their NPC enemies. They will break truces, violate every norm, and use lethal forces as a first resort. They are wolves in a world that is usually incredibly hostile, and this kind of behavior often makes sense for the goals of play.

In competitive domain games, it's more normal for players to want to engage with the norms of their setting that limit conflict. They don't like executing another player's little guy (unless the PVP brain has set in), and want to keep hostages or captives. They hate (hate!) torture, and consider needless cruelty of that kind to be beyond the pale. They want to fight with honor.

This is great! Most competitive games benefit from conflicts that are usually less than total conflicts of extermination. But there is a barrier between the player and character that must be considered. The player is a modern human who has probably grown up in a stew of ideas about equality, punishment, and justice that may mismatch them with the society presented. If it's normal for the victor in a war to burn the loser's villages while the loser watches helplessly in a castle, they may balk to do it and be incensed if it's done to them, and treat it as not only the act of an enemy but a demon.

Players are not always on the same page about what is a limited conflict and where an escalation is happening, and because they don't know that they're not on the same page it can get frustrating. The worst thing that can happen is when one player thinks they're establishing a boundary for the game's social contract or engaging with a safety tool (the sort of thing you should never lie about) and the other player thinks they're negotiating in-game (and rubbing their hands together thinking about how much they love lying.)

Often, players are accustomed to the norms of capture from the perspective of prisoners. They ruthlessly and immediately try to break free from every orc jail they find themselves in, and often the DM is trying to abet them because imprisonment is often awkward and feels bad for the campaign's goals. When the players are suddenly in the role of the captor, they may have to deal with what it feels like to deal with a defiant and squirming prisoner. In many places and times, the common response to prisoners who tried to escape was to execute them. In some places, noble prisoners were asked to take an oath not to try to escape, and that oath was taken seriously.

I find as a player that squirming after my little guy has been captured is usually just prolonging a spiral of loss. It's best to negotiate terms or let my little guy just lose. Ultimately, players usually capture each others' PCs because they don't want to execute them, but squirming too much is challenging that notion. At worst the captor player feels like their mercy is being taken advantage of, and that they "should" execute prisoners far more readily, starting with the problem character. This dynamic doesn't come up often for PCs in adventure games, and often is not considered beforehand. Be forewarned! Prisoners in these games are establishing a soft iterated prisoners' dilemma, where defecting might kill them and future prisoners.

The man 

Establishing norms around prisoners and their attempts to escape behoove such PCs, but interestingly you may find that "establishing norms" is much weaker than one might naively assume in competitive domain games. Even if the DM prepares a list of cultural norms around conflict, the player is still just a player in a game. They may object if their main PC's cousin is executed for violating a truce in a neighboring city even if the norm is well-ingrained. Their cousin had a funny hat and was almost level 2, you dick!

In many times and places, rulers are endlessly trying to maintain their reputation as honest exemplars of their society's norms. They may be deceptive and disloyal, but to be known as deceptive and disloyal by all your rival powers was often a major problem. Players will not care about that nearly as much. They may keep it in mind, but behind every rival lordling who violates the culture's norms is another player that they already have feelings about. In each PC are two people, and the one who's a modern person trying to have fun wins a lot of slack for the one who's violating the customs of a culture that isn't even real.

This means that players can and will trash their own reputation to get ahead, and they will not necessarily face much punishment from other players. To pick up the slack, if you're setting up a domain campaign, you should therefore consider if acquiring a tyrannical reputation is going to provoke friction from NPCs, especially the NPCs who are under such a person. You probably don't want to make consequences so heavy as to straightjacket the choice to follow the customs of the country, but games are hardly hurt if the ruler PCs constantly have to deal with unruly vassals in the best of times, and offending their sensibilities will create interesting problems.

Unceasing Rage

Competition between players often feels more viscerally engaging than contending with NPCs. Your opponent may be as dedicated to winning and as wily as you are, and they are not obliged to foreshadow threats or abide by the other ways that DMs stay "fair." But keep in mind that when the conflict ends, even if they despoiled your city or quartered your heirs, you as a player don't want to commit to make them your enemy for the rest of the game. Campaigns are long, and the sweet tension of losing a conflict will untense after a time. It's generally more interesting if old foes may one day work together than if not, even if that potential is never realized.

Certainly you want to avoid a situation where your enemy has learned that you're going to spend all your time hurting them, even after they win a war or force a decisive concession. Think about what that game will be like! Sure it makes sense for you to want to hurt an enemy who hurt you, but eventually the game should move on into other diplomatic territory. It kind of sucks, at least in the games I have experienced, to pull down someone with you because they hit you once. It's like that cruel EDH player who focuses down the person who did 2 damage to them in the early game, or worse yet carries forth vendettas from previous matches. I think players often do this out of a sense that they're demonstrating good game theory, proving how damaging it is to mess with their little guys, but the main thing they're encouraging is for them to be driven fully out of the game so their opponent can at last have some peace and quiet. Often the opponent will be loathe to do this because it feels bad to drive another player out of the game. This is a nice notion, and you should not reward it with a game of chicken.

People can get truly angry. They can get tilted, so out-of-game mad that it creates awkward and unfun situations for everyone involved. I have tried to give tips for player mindset and game design to prevent this, but it has happened in almost every domain game I've played. The tension spills over from roleplaying through PVP brain to genuine rage. When this happens, do not try to solve it in-game. Address it directly, whether you see it in yourself or if it's a wider situation. Whatever approach someone is taking, it isn't working and needs to be adjusted. Sometimes someone learns through anger that competitive RPGs aren't for them. More often, they just need to step back and adjust. We can all help each other in such moments.

The game system can be of aid by making major conflicts as short and decisive as possible. The longer things drag on, the more needling and incremental advantage players try to eke out, the harder it is to win or lose with grace. The one thing players hate more than having lost is the process of losing. Perversely, players tend to be tenacious, and will defiantly fight to the last man when it doesn't really make sense, prolonging the part that sucks the most for them, often because they're working from the adventure game mindset where fighting to the last is usually rewarded, and giving up is sometimes seen as frustration with the game.

Therefore, the DM should consider when the outcome of events should be presented as a done deal. I know a DM whose domain game has been very successful with this. Wars, in their many battles and advances and vagaries, are resolved with a big die roll, and the victor makes their stipulations and the loser, who is informed they've already lost and surrendered, has to deal with them. Obviously there is tension between this approach and the normal high degree of latitude given to PCs, so you should be as clear as possible what parts of your game might enforce such truncated outcomes, and remind people the first few times they might come up. Playing in this same game, I was defending my city-state against a large navy and one of the players was surprised when I reminded them that if I win, I may have captured their city-state on the opposite side of the peninsula. To that player, the conflict felt like a major sea battle on my turf. The DM did well in reminding them that a lot can happen in a military campaign, and the toss of the dice represented way more than they may have been thinking of.

Let the outcome come quickly. Be clear what is at stake.

I tried to find the source for this but no one posted it with credit.

I note that players are generally mild about their victories. Even when PVP Brain makes them go hard after a rival PC, they tend to be very merciful with any populace they conquer along the way. If you are trying to make a game where cities are despoiled and countrysides burned, you will need to put work in. I might set these up as choices with clear mechanical benefits, just so the player doesn't feel like a heel for doing something normative for victors to do in your setting. Make clear that if you sack a city, it will reduce their willingness and ability to act against you, and that if you don't, it will be a test of your soldiers' loyalty, so you aren't risking nothing by being magnanimous.

In domain games, PCs should probably be risking catastrophic loss from time to time. The game should be ready for this to occur. When the PC ruling family is deposed, are they out of the game? Are they set back so far that they'll never rival anyone else again? Probably that's not the sort of outcome you want to go for. If PCs can be deposed, there should be interesting things that non-ruler PCs can do, and it shouldn't feel like a consolation prize. Non-ruler PCs should be intensely valuable allies, and you should consider gating as little as possible behind formal rulership of a domain. Otherwise, consider some way for players who fall behind to catch up. Make development hit diminishing returns, or let nimble, unencumbered PCs get to take advantage of opportunities their ruler PC colleagues can't.

Beware also the thorny problem of conquest. Domain games often sell the fantasy that if you play well enough, maybe you can conquer vast lands and have many people under you. Defeated lordlings may bend the knee, but player characters are an order of magnitude more spiteful on average. In many ways this is the same problem as PCs taking each other captive, only worse because the loser is given some power and leeway with which to spit in their new liege's face. My brother calls this the "Spiteful Vassal Problem". The D&D setting Birthright has special blood magic related to rulership, and if a vassal breaks their oath of fealty their liege can immediately tell. A construction like that puts the balance towards PCs being able to conquer each other, leaving the option to go back on oaths of loyalty but with complication. Decide as a DM if you want to tell stories together where PC domains can gainfully conquer each other or if it's a fool's errand, and arrange the game to make it happen.

Coda

My most important piece of advice for competitive games, for DMs and players alike, is to accept that other players will make decisions you don't like. In a cooperative adventure game, you may not even notice. In a competitive game, when your ally betrays you for what you think is a stupid reason, it can be hard to keep your cool.

You have to honor the decision anyway. The game does not work if you get mad because players do something you wouldn't do. People will be suboptimal and they will be erratic and things from outside the game will affect what they do. What's more, they have access to information that you don't. They have had different conversations and different plans than you, and secrets abound in competitive games that you won't be privy to.

It's hard to understand why everyone is doing what they're doing, so just try to make it fun. Make it fun to fight you. Make it fun to beat you. Take big swings. Check in with people. Ensure that your in-character and out-of-character thoughts are distinct, because you'll find in competitive games that your character is lying about things which are definitely not okay to lie about between friends and fellow-players.

I love the sweet tension of good competitive play. It can be done without gall and vinegar, but it requires a deliberate mindset shift if you are accustomed to other forms of RPGs. Realizing how you think is the seed of changing how you think.

May your reign last a thousand years, if you can keep it.

Location: Tower of the Immovable

 This small dungeon-space is at-home almost everywhere. I put it on an abandoned island in Acmori. The inhabitants of the nearby island claim a wizard lives within the impressive stone tower against the mountain, but he has not been seen for years.

The tower is crudely fashioned of dark bluish stone, its plaster eaten more and more each year by moss. It is a near-unthinkable seven stories tall, leaning slightly forward. Its windows are but thin slits, save for a balcony on the front of the fourth floor. Each floor is about thirteen feet high, and the tower has a diameter of forty feet. Unless otherwise stated, assume the thin window provide dim light during the day.

Seven Stories

1. Support beams along the walls are rotted and marred by graffiti. The floor has fallen away in places, revealing a loose and debased foundation. On the far side, the stairs run along the wall.
2. The stairs continuing on the third floor are barricaded with boards, branches, and nails. This floor is mostly empty save for a straw mattress, broken desk, and a pair of dull knives. Two small chutes in the ceiling hang over small piles of ash.
1. From the oxidation of the nails, it is clear the barricade was made over a year ago. It is easy enough to deconstruct from this side, though disturbing it causes vertigo as the room shakes slightly.
3. The stairs continue on to the fourth floor. This room is a forge, but attention is drawn immediately to the large alabaster idol against the opposite wall. It is graven to represent a woman engulfed in flames painted many colors. In her left hand she holds out a lump of polished black stone.  The rest of the room is full of poorly-forged blades in various styles and states of completion.
1. This idol is of a goddess obscure in this part of the world, one of fire, radiation, and the ephemeral. The lump of stone is ebony carved into the shape of a hand and polished, gives DR 3 against radiation, and is worth 35 gold coins even to those who don't even know its true significance. The idol itself is worth much more, but any attempt to move it will cause the tower to shake and possibly collapse.
2. The swords are variously dented, impure, brittle, or poorly-balanced. One, a silver xiphos, is worth a couple gold coins due to its material value, but otherwise they are not valuable.
4. The stairway terminates here with a wall screening someone ascending from the rest of the room. To the left is the balcony. To the right is a cage with a shining bird. To the far wall is a stairwell ascending. Anyone who reaches this floor notices (especially if they have no other light) a strange glow of shifting color coming from the room beyond. This comes from a creature I will here call an atomic phoenix in the cage.
1. The light of the phoenix is harmful, dealing HP damage based on the amount of exposure. Peeking around the corner once hurts but doesn't take points off your total. Running across the room to the far staircase inflicts 1d6 (assuming the average character has like 8 hp.) Running towards the cage and unlatching it does like 3d6. Overturning a table and dragging it around as a shield does 1d4 or possibly no damage, depending. If the bird is unlatched it will immediately fly out of the balcony. It is intelligent, of equivalent rank to an angel, and speaks bird language as well as any legal speech.
2. The room is full of various furnishings-- tables, desks, crates, and the like, all left here for storage. Searching them yields nothing but a dead family of mice. Moving one around without counterbalancing the weight causes the tower to shake. Moving more than a couple risks toppling the tower.
3. On the balcony is a suit of straps and plates of lead. Acts as heavy medium armor, and makes someone mostly immune to radiation from sources they are facing.
4. Anyone who steps fully onto the balcony will cause 1d4 sparrows to fly up to them. If they speak bird language, the sparrows will explain that the wizard used to give them errands, but they haven't seen him for a long time.
5. The stairway continues to the sixth floor. This floor is a lounge. Comfortable stone couch. Out-of-tune harp. A cosmetics table with an impressively wide bronze mirror. The weight of more than one person here can cause the tower to shake if not carefully counterbalanced. Egregious distributions of weight cause the tower to collapse.
1. Most of the cosmetics are dried out, but a couple still preserve. There is eye shadow that replaces your color vision with heat vision for as long as you wear it. Also fun weird wizard make-up as improvised.
6. The stairway shakes as you climb up. It continues to the seventh floor. This room is filled with rows of scroll racks. Further within, a corpse in dark green robes decompose, staring in your direction with impeccably shadowed eyes.
1. This is the corpse of the wizard. Lying open on his chest is his spellbook, containing the spells Form of the Dragon, Illusion, Sympathy, Forbidden Snakes, Magic Counter, Bite Augury, and Speak with the Dead.
2. Searching the rest of the library reveals the following significant tomes (consult your secret library handout): Blood and Glory, Eternal, The Lies of Domesus, and Torture In The Land of Makhazin. The rest are travelogues, bestiaries, rumors of treasure, local histories, and commentaries in the following languages: Acmor, Nasjicu, Trepaniet, Bird.
7. The stairs end here. It is clear the tower is swaying. The room is empty save for a mosaic of concentric circles in the floor and a golden orb set in the ceiling.
1. This orb is about a yard [~1 meter] across, of intricate golden filigree. It has a wide button in the very bottom. The hemisphere it is built into is a little wider than it, and the edges seem to bump against the orb.
2. If someone presses the button in the bottom of the orb, it will fall to the floor. Lacking its main support, the tower will pitch forward and fall. This kills the occupants. If someone presses the button again, it will hang immovably in space. If this is done to arrest the tower's fall, most of the top floor will hang off the orb, but the rest of the tower will fall to the ground.

The Name is not the Point (magic sword generator)

 Thanks to semiurge, Vayra, Regalia, Renefor, and most fully ☆ deus ex parabola.

There is a grand epic written in blades-- the sword-song Cov Cuvaʒuth. Every sword possesses some of the song, but the strongest phrases makes stronger swords, intelligent weapons with a will to realize their three-word volition. 

Scholars try desperately to understand the thread of the epic by compiling lists of famous swords and their wielders, or by searching scriptures for convergent passages with known blades, or composing inspired passages themselves while studying martial arts. Grey monks gather swords, orbseekers scatter them, but ultimately both are in vain-- the swords shall be set in order when the end-times come, and the seer-giant Calamus returns to redeem the ocean.

The secret advantage of the THREE WORD SWORD template is that it forces you to describe an object more fully, to consider its actual physical properties. But the name is not the point-- you can and should do this with any object that's the focus of a scene. Don't let a shield stay a shield or bread be bread. 

Cursing Politics and Folly (GLoG class: Ranger)

Rangers are an odd thing. In their original D&D incarnation, they were potent fighters who got two hit dice at first level and only got experience if they were essentially alone on adventures. There was a lot to them, and while they seemed terribly unsuited to basically any D&D campaign where you hoped to level up they felt somehow cohesive. Ranging? How romantic. If later versions have seemed aimless I think it is in large part due to the attempt to tame this wild, weird original.

As with the druid, monk, barbarian, and the like, I want to focus on specific parts of the soup of ranger tropes, give them a coherent vector and a pathos, and inject some specificity. This class will be for the Acmori region, and represents those design goals. This ranger is an expedition captain, someone who leads parties out along the frozen seas of winter. (Alternatively, they are zoa captains, riding out on the open waves of summer. This is secondary because the Acmori campaign centralizes the winter adventuring party.)

The captain is a figure whose main tool is their crew, to which they are also bound. As a player, this creates a necessary tension. Over a captain’s career, they are well-served to cultivate relationships with particular crewmates, and eventually to negotiate better contracts. One captain might get around some obligations by gradually replacing crewmembers with crusading partisans. Another may constantly be on the lookout to make porters of the apefolk they encounter one adventure and lookouts of the eye-magi they find on the next. A captain PC is a natural adventurer, ruler, servant, questgiver, boss, and blue-collar.

Sword digression: the symbol of a captain’s office is their sword, and they also carry the previous captain’s sword. You have to carry both— make the crew carry almost anything else, but these weapons are your burden. Lose one sword and you’re jinxed. Lose both and you’re doomed. Pick one sword from the list below to be yours, and roll randomly from the same list to be the previous captain’s.

Captain

Starting Equipment: Crew of ten windfarers, thick beard or braids, fiery eyes, fur-lined crested helmet, banner with your personal device or that of your ruler, flask of gløgg, a tern or monkey, and two captain’s swords.

• A: Writ, Excavation
• B: Two-Weapon Fighting, Sealore
• C: Old Salt
• D: Aspyrian

Writ: You are bound by your duty to your crew. When you agree to go on odyssey for a patron, you are allowed to forswear payment but you must accept no less than 27 gold coins (or 32 gold coins and 4 silver, if you wish to claim your double share.) After a successful voyage you can replace any dead or retired crewmates (each has [level] HP), but if it was unsuccessful it will take a season of bottom-feeding in a port to find new hands.

Excavations: When on the ice, shipwrecked, or otherwise in the wilderness, your crew can quickly excavate a [level]-section bivouac, shack, or other hibernacle.

Two-Weapon Fighting: When fighting with your two captain’s swords, you get +1 defense and reroll 1s for damage. (Keep rerolling if you keep getting 1s.)

Sealore: When you encounter something strange on the ocean, you have a 2-in-6 chance of knowing a relevant tale about it.

Old Salt: You are never surprised in combat. Sleep does not make you any less alert. Additionally, after studying an NPC or mythic creature, get the answer to any one yes-no question about them.

Aspyrian: Through a combination of experience, lore, and intuition, you can track anyone or anything across any distance. You are led over bare stone or the ever-changing waves, seized by a conviction, a vision of your quarry that always proves accurate. When actively tracking someone, a black mark appears on their palm in warning. (This omen is caused by all sufficiently intense pursuits, not specifically by you. It's just a thing that happens, like the sunrise or spontaneous generation.)

This, but pre-Aesaetas Ruinas

d20 Captain’s Swords

1. A handsome falchion with a spiked crossguard and a manta-skin hilt.

2. A cutlass fresh-forged, kept in a bamboo scabbard bearing the ideograms “Let my Children Judge”

3. A keen falx, held in a purpose-built kney-green harness, hilted with damascene gold.

4. A gladius, the standard issue of the Summer Wars since rendered quaint. Now bears a modest carbuncle in the hilt.

5. An ornately-worked harpe, with an attendant tablet announcing its pedigree as the weapon of an ancient hero.

6. A carp’s tongue sword with a turquoise groove in the center. It weeps ancient blood in humid weather.

7. An arsenical copper jian with eight topazes inlaid in the hilt and one great topaz in the scabbard. The scabbard and hilt are bear-leather

8. A xiphos, inscribed with the ideogram “Vigor” on one side and “Votelain” on the other. One edge is serrated.

9. A rough-forged swerdan, battered, its newly-wound handle obviously standing out. Makes small black fires when held to something flammable while the ancient word “Fýr” is spoken.

10. A spatha, with one side wavy (to represent the sea) and the other side straight (to represent the land). This is used in Telumancy, where the weapon is thrown into the air and the side that points to the thrower is used to answer a question. The hilt has a discrete clip which can weight the result, always landing on the intended side.

11. A straight-bladed carnumban’s curtana, its scabbard and hilt ornate silver and gold, set with red glass gems. Whoever originally owned this was surely a beautiful fellow, possibly a temple champion.

12. A skydisk sword, with a small jade astronomical chart by the hilt. At the pommel is a small ideogram too ornate to be readable.

13. A leaf-shaped sword, engraved with a cartouche on the base of the blade, with blue velvet covering the bottom third showing an underwater scene.

14. A seax, with a brass hilt sculpted to resemble a snake belching the blade, with eyes of jasper.

15. An antenna sword, fitted into a cowhide scabbard, tattooed with a tessellating pattern.

16. A bronze rapier, a light weapon long enough to outreach most other light weapons. Held in a long sling like a strung bow.

17. A sickle sword with an intricate bifurcated hilt of coral and gold. It is made to be carried in a waistband, perhaps unwisely.

18. A grip-tongue sword, its hilt gold, its scabbard red leather tipped with gold. This scabbard-tip is actually hollow, a false bottom to carry hidden messages.

19. A khopesh with a mother-of-pearl handle and silvered hilt, inscribed with an invocation against shattering.

20. A falcata with an enameled wolf's-maw handle set with agates, the back edge of the sword filled with meticulous tallies.

Scenario: the Refutionary

 Exercising the old brain-muscles with a short scenario. This is meant to take place over a few months of downtime, perhaps while the player characters are pursuing their own domestic projects. The structure of the scenario involves two sets of progression: one is time and the other is escalation. If the PCs don't interact much with events, they will eventually become unavoidable. If they brutishly slay their way through the initial stages, matters will escalate. I also want to practice building in the potential for catastrophe.

Timeline

A stranger came to your island in the latter days of the winter, not noble or wealthy but with a strange assurance of import. A magician, some said. A refutionary, he said-- someone hired to defend someone in legal disputes. He says he is a Canuanite, and that's why his law is not our law.

If a player character is a person of repute, he will beg their hospitality for the year. If they refuse, he will find hospitality from another house or live in the wilds, and the PC's business enterprises will suffer a divinely-ordained freak accident. (Socu-worshipers are pretty much obliged to oblige him.)

Come spring, strange folk will come to the island, having chartered the skimp Storm's Eye. Their skin is the pallor of ash, they wear dark robes, and their intense mien is unlike any found in known society. They announce every movement before them make them, and are clumsy, yet the cloy of magic is heavy on them. They seek the refutionary, offering payment to those who assist them. If the refutionary is a PC's guest, he will beg sanctuary against them, claiming they seek an item in his rightful possession. If asked why they seek him, they claim he stole an article of their faith. Both parties will be as vague as possible. 

The object is the Eye of Aygerim, a ball of cinnabar that the refutionary inherited from his mother. He is aware that it can be used to occult objects, hiding them to be retrieved later. It essentially functions like a bag of holding, if a bag of holding sent your gear to god's storeroom for the endtimes. He does not know that it contains a trapped giant, Körwşi, who will be freed if the orb is broken open.

• If the PCs assist the refutionary: the strange folk will make one major attempt to steal the orb, and if that fails they will flee the island and its justice. 
• If the PCs accede to the strange folk: the refutionary will flee if possible but will not initiate violence, and can be manhandled into giving up the Eye before going out to the wilds to live in isolation. When they have the Eye, the strange folk depart on Storm's Eye.
• If the PCs don't conclusively assist one or the other: the refutionary will have been able to escape to the wilds and live in hiding, with the strange folk staying on the island to seek him out. 

Come summer, a sinkhole tears apart a shepherd's field (temporarily imperiling a pair of adorable sheep.) Below is a heretofore unknown complex, and won't someone go down there and check it out? Even if the PCs don't want to enter this spooky dungeon, ask if they want to play the 0-level gravediggers and clowns that get stuck with it. 

This "complex" was an ancient headwoman's hall, its semi-labyrinthine layout a result of inferior architectural methods requiring many load-bearing walls. (For layout, overcomplicate a map of a a PC's or player's home.) Fossilized wooden beams still bear simple depictions of mountains, winged serpents, and seaborn rafts. Stony bones of two figures, huddled together. A bone knife. The tatters of a strange knitten tabbard that once held polished bronze discs. 

The basement of this complex is an open space, containing many basins of faintly glowing green goo. You really have to weave around these basins to get across the room, not what you'd want to do while someone threw stones at you. I don't know what this goo does to you, but I know it requires a save vs. death.

This, with more goo

• Inscribed on a faded tapestry over the far wall is the spell NAPALM RAIN, a curse of mass destruction. If the refutionary is still alive, the PCs may find him here with a small pile of rocks, trying to decode the spell's contents. If the PCs try to deny him access to it, he will occult it with the Eye and try to negotiate with them, casting the spell blindly if violence seems inevitable.
• If the strange folk are still on the island, they will linger around the sinkhole on the assumption it may have something to do with the refutionary. They will recognize the tapestry's power, and if they can acquire it the most morally dubious (but not outright antagonistic) port the islanders know of will be blasted to ruin by fiery flames.

Come autumn, the strange folk return, Storm's Eye full of partisans and and Becalmer, a line-zoa containing a prominent agtree judge and her family. They come to seize the Eye or anything discovered in the underground complex through traditional law. The line-zoa cannot legally port without permission of the island, since it is a war-ready vessel.

The agtree judge, Uden Baptizer, is widely recognized as impartial in matters of justice, though she has a tendency to exile those who attempt to subvert her.

• If the refutionary is still alive, he will offer his services as a defendant and defense. The strange folk have recognized legal documentation of the Eye's significance to them, and have a religious mandate of stewardship of truly dangerous artifacts. Their case may be harmed by their previous actions in the scenario.

• If forced to give up the Eye, the refutionary will first break it.

Escalation

• If the refutionary dies: two of his lovers, basically unaware of each other, separately arrive the next season to avenge him and figure out what he was trying to do with the Eye on this island. A hard task, since he was just trying to lay low and procrastinate.
• If the strange folk die: The port of Posmatrač, which apparently has been sponsoring the strange folk's order, begins conducting war raids against the island. Most of their fleet are unarmored rebgraves, but they have access to certain weapons the strange folk sought to hide from the world: a great lens that uses sunlight to boil zoas, an aquatic vampire, and a basketball-sized orb of uranium. Their delegations will also take the role of the strange folk in future seasons.
• If Körwşi is unleashed: he will act like he owns the place and issue orders to the PCs and other leaders. A succession of wacko mercenaries will turn up on the island to make trouble and eventually fight him.
• If Körwşi is killed: Wow! You did it! His skeleton hatches from his body and sprints into the ocean. His flesh becomes lions that flee into the wilderness. His eyes shoot away and become patches of quicksand. Only his heart will remain.
• If an island is destroyed by Napalm and the perpetrators are Socu Worshippers: a sect of Guian priests will come in secret to the island to work revolution.
• If an island is destroyed by Napalm and the perpetrators are Dodkulists: An embargo is placed by most major Dodkulist ports on the perpetrators. The next conclave of priests (held every ~5 years) will meet to decide whether to extend the embargo and whether other actions must be taken.
• If Uden Baptizer is killed: the apparent perpetrator is exiled in the eyes of devout members of the agtree sect. While in a center of Socu's faith, there is a 50% chance each season that someone will challenge you to a duel, diminishing by 10% for each duel or court case won.

Characters

Teodor, Refutionary: Malsani Barbarian 1. (fights perfectly in darkness, reads lips, and signs, master economist, can speak to trees, sleep comfortably in all circumstances, doesn't understand war, hatred is infectious to him, doesn't understand sexual reproduction, faceblind)

• Bears the Eye of Aygerim (domain: perspective.)
• Carries copious amounts of kruber, a strong dill beer.
• Only weapon is a kirpan with "votelain" inscribed in silver on the blade; this is an archaic/legal term meaning comfort or ease.
• has a wire brush for personal grooming.

The Order of the Eye is of occult origins, but claims to have studied miracles in God's whirlpools for well over a thousand years. They set themselves against Resativa, a body of unconscious beliefs which people have little power to change and which promote egocentrism. They come from the Vergarites, but are not initiated into the deeper mysteries of that sect.

They tend to leave out the tale of their origins, for it betrays their great weakness. Concealed beneath their robes, each has a great eye filling their chest, and it is this eye which controls their body, save for their head and neck which is controlled by their heads. This is why they narrate their actions and are seen as clumsy-- their head must tell their chest-eye what is before them. Each carries a walking staff to feel their way forward as well, but are careful to conceal this intent from outsiders.

Each member of the order is tyrannously strong (Str 18, etc.), but in combat take penalties for being blind, even as their head mutters directions.

ThAKNHSThA, Abbess of the Eye: Sanx Cleric 2/Magician 1. Hers is a common acronymic name. It is short for "The arm knows not how sure the aim." Knows the spells Eye Lasers, Snakelike Jaws, Viscerakinesis, Iconoclasm, and Jeremiad.

• She possesses, and is willing to distribute as bribes, the following items: an immaculate cutting sword with a mosaic hilt and a blade with a cinnabar groove, a mercury thermometer(!), a faience gaming board, a jug of milky wine that induces a death-like sleep, 150 gold coins with intricate claimshell inscriptions, and godparentage (ocean/witch).

Uden, Islam, Sezim, and Udeno; acolytes of the Eye: Damdar or Sanx Cleric 1/Magician 1. Know the spells Eye Lasers, Snakelike Jaws, and Iconoclasm. 

• Among them they possess five staves, two board-shields, three bronze-and-leather caps, two balsam gaming boards, 8 chunks of cinnabar, and 43 gold coins.

Körwşi, the Flesh-Rimed Beholder: Nephil 3/Juggler 2 (obsession: mourning). Was imprisoned by the ancient wanderer Aygerim, with whom he did battle. On his heart is tattooed the image of his partner, who was killed in the Titanomachy. Ever since he died, the beholder swore that nothing good was left in the world. He remembers on which island his tons-heavy armor and spear are, and may trade their location as a bargaining chip or send any peons acquired to seek them out.

Mega, lover of Teodor: stats as Teodor. The youngest of ten older siblings, all of whom would avenge him. In fact, given his mouth they probably expect to avenge him at some point.

Safira, lover of Teodor: Malsani green pilgrim 1. Good at working up domestic animals into a frenzy.