RPGaDay2024 Day 9 - An Accessory You'd Like to See

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This one is easy, given my essay yesterday about randomizer decks, because I literally spoke to Monte Cook about it at GenCon this year.

The answer is a system-independent Sooth Deck.

The Sooth Deck is specific to Invisible Sun. Played whenever scenes or conditions change in the game, the deck combines a variety of factors into one card, and those factors directly or indirectly affect the game, including:

  • Which of the 9 suns is dominant, and accordingly, which types of magic will work better or worse.
  • Which (system defined) types of people have advantages
  • What factors are influencing the scene
  • What meta-factors may be in play
  • What are possible good or bad outcomes one might see from those factors (joy or despair, which are also Invisible Sun mechanics)
  • The image itself, which as Oracle cards might give the GM inspiration for elements to include.
All of this is extremely cool, especially in the surreal world of Invisible Sun, where even the most contrived coincidences are commonplace, the bizarre stories and outcomes are expected.

I mentioned in yesterday's essay that the missing magical bridge had been confined. What I didn't mention was that the confinement was by other bridges, because the magical bridge was taking away business. This might be a weird or even stupid twist in most games, but in Invisible Sun, it's completely reasonable, and not even the strangest outcome possible.

But unfortunately, what that means is that the Sooth Deck produces results that are too weird, contrived or inappropriate for other games. It also connects directly to a system where failure is rewarded as the only way of growing your character through combining Joy/Despair points.

My desired accessory would be the same thing as the Sooth Deck, but system independent. To be fair, I have tried using the Sooth Deck for a 3.5 D&D game, and the results weren't great, even though I run a sandbox world, after being inspired by my two Invisible Sun campaigns.

My Desired Accessory

Support "What hidden factors are influencing the scene". I think there is great value in bringing in unexpected details which do not come from the mind of the GM. They don't have to be as blunt as with Invisible Sun, but they do mean the same encounter, run 3 times, will have three completely different feels and potential outcomes.

Be an Oracle Deck so that GMs or even players can see different elements that could affect the scene. Like an artistically beautiful RPG Rorschach blot, provide the beautiful card with dozens of integrated but unique elements and let them take inspiration from that to tweak either the scene or the actions that PCs or NPCs take.

Related to both of the above, create threads in the cards so that patterns of influence can potentially become part of the game, if noticed and agreed. This connects to the "meta influences" described above. For example, my characters were struggling with an NPC called "The Hyena"; what if three cards during a session all had a mouse in them...implying that "The Rat" was also pulling some strings, in a way that both GM and players could accept. As an alternate example, the same three mice encountered during a problematic undertaking might imply "Rats leaving a sinking ship" to the players, and might cause them to consider bailing on the undertaking--something they wouldn't normally do.

It's difficult, but provide a system-independent mechanism for providing rewards or penalties to the players (or NPCs) during a scene. This would be REALLY hard, given how different systems are, and how they emphasize different things. But MCG tackled that head-on with their Darkest House product, and I think they have the ability to create something similar in the direction of influencing games from the outside.

This is a lot to ask for a generic game accessory that I could theoretically use in Call of Cthulhu as easily as D&D or Old Gods of Appalachia. But for me, such a tool would be invaluable for helping me keep games fresh and surprising, while still letting me keep them the game that we've collaborated on over the last 2-20 years.

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