Rules of Enlightenment

The Personal Touch

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No two lives are the same. Each of us enter the One Land as a newborn clinging to hope, desperate to survive the hardships that will make us an individual with our own stories to tell. These cities, streets, and landscapes are no different. They began as nothing more than dust and have grown into one of any number of personal discoveries.

Since HPS was published (even during the launch of HPS Legends, now that I think about it), people have asked me one question in particular. “Are you planning to release any setting supplements?” The quick answer is no. The long answer relates to something I wanted to share with you as the next installment of the Rules of Enlightenment: making it your world.

While my early days of roleplaying started out with the AD&D campaigns of Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft, and the magnificent world of Barsaive in Earthdawn, I’ve never been one for concrete settings. Sure, the maps and richness of these worlds were great with hordes of adventure hooks at your disposal, but there was always one major issue I’ve had with pre-existing settings. Aside from a few campaigns here or there, most players don’t know a damned thing about the world they’re playing in. Yet they’re playing characters who were born there. There’s always been a disconnect there I could never shake.

It feels felt like a hard break from the fiction we take so much time and energy to establish. And don’t even get me started on homebrew settings or historical campaigns. (Sorry, Fraser.) As the years went on and my memory became less reliable than ever, retaining all the details of a fictional world felt a bit overwhelming. Even reading fantasy novels left me wondering if I missed something crucial, hence why I find it hard to read series like A Song of Fire and Ice (also known as Game of Thrones) and The Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t until I read Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself that I began to discover the possibility of what I call “veiled settings,” ones where the particulars are not important. You just need to know you’re in a port city where a lot of nobility live and it’s the central seat of power for the kingdom. Done! Everything else is revealed on a need-to-know basis.

For roleplaying games (and story games in particular), veiled settings are an open invitation for everyone at the table to establish facts about the world. With HPS, it didn’t feel right to get too specific on the One Land because I wanted to leave plenty of room for each group to adapt the world to suit their needs and desires. They just need to know enough that keeps everything cohesive and connected, to give everyone a baseline of possible storylines and major characters to launch their game. The rest is filler material for everyone to create as they need it. Remember, one of the major guidelines of HPS is “don’t ask, tell.” Writers shouldn’t be asking the Director if something exists in Yung Zhi, they should be creating something that would exist in Yung Zhi. Their version of Yung Zhi.

This is why there will never be any setting supplements for HPS. Ever. That’s not what this game is about. It’s about creating a multitude of alternate realities focused on this one place floating in the cosmos. Even the way in which I wrote the core rulebook demonstrates this: the monks of Heaven’s Peak are looking for creative and noble people to showcase what they would do to save the One Land. All we’ve done is provide you with the foundation for all games of HPS to share; the rest is up to you!

Create Within Your Comfort Zone

So just how much setting detail is too much? It’s an incredibly subjective question and one I pondered about for a long time during the development of HPS. So much so that I seriously considered working on another version of HPS designed for D&D‘s 5th edition, one that was chock full of all the specific setting detail you could want (or far more than you really needed, depending on your personal needs for a setting guide). But here’s the thing that would happen by changing the setting depth of HPS; it will also change how the game is played. How could you play a game where you can conceive of whatever you can imagine while you’re limited by the immense scope of a highly detailed setting? It’s possible, don’t get me wrong, but changing how the setting worked in the game meant a drastic change in the game itself. If the One Land is a fundamental part of High Plains Samurai, how players approach and interact with it is now a mechanical aspect of the game.

When it comes down to it, creating roleplaying games is a tightrope walk across a very wide chasm of options. There are so many personal choices in play styles, genres, and more that no one product can meet all those needs, so you have to make a choice on how you want your game to go. It was also a personal choice as a designer to create something for the Director to create as much as Writers during play and not in prep. In other words, I wanted Directors to have as much creative control as the Writers and that meant leaving the setting loose and interpretive.

So where is the line? To help demonstrate my point, I posted a very skewed Twitter poll on just how much detail GMs want in their settings. By skewed, I mean it’s only involving my personal Twitter followers garnered as a result of the games I make, including HPS. Here are the results.

A Twitter poll with 11 votes asking, "How much setting detail do you like in RPGs with a built-in setting?". 37% favour "Just enough to hook me." 36% favour "Shh, I got this." And 27% favour "Tell me everything!"

While the overall results point to an overwhelming desire for a veiled setting, even the winning result is divided evenly between using nothing more than a concept and the version that exists for HPS.

Tips For Making The One Land Yours

How I play HPS and present the One Land will be different from how any of you will do it. Even then, I’ve directed dozens of different versions of the One Land. Some of them blending the One Land with the ruins of our own world, others that stray completely away from humans and embrace a full fantasy vibe with characters who are half-animal. In that time, I’ve picked up a few tricks to help my Writers experience a unique version of the setting beyond the format we established in our Session Zero.

Architecture: What does a brothel in Yung Zhi look like? Or Serenity Falls? What passes for buildings in Rust? A City’s architecture speaks a lot about its foundation, history, and the people who call it home. What does it look like when you walk down a street in Monsoon? Even the nomadic clans of Khar’tep can have their own architectural touches in their tents, wagons, and other domiciles.

Fighting Styles: In a combat-heavy place like the One Land, how people fight speaks a lot about their cultural influences. Whether or not you decide to use real world fighting styles, develop new ones from scratch, or simply play it by ear and use stuff that looked cool in that last action movie you saw, how characters fight speaks to the world itself. From fighting dirty to fighting with honour, use your combat scenes to demonstrate what it means to be a survivor of Chaos’ Wrath.

Hardships: Are the people starving most of the time? How scarce is water and what are people doing to overcome this serious obstacle? Is everyone lean and hungry or is it possible for some with the means to indulge their culinary desires? The depth of hardships brought on by Chaos’ Wrath will not only provide a personalized scope of horror to your game but it will give Writers a baseline from which they can establish how their characters will interact with the setting.

Starting Point: Which of the six key locations in HPS speaks to your group the most? Of these six, which feels like it will have the heaviest influence on the goals, motivations, approaches, and outcomes you place into this game as a Director? Start your story there. If you and your Writers can totally dig into the western themes of HPS, start in Serenity Falls. If you like the steampunk struggles of Rust, let your first story begin there. Launching a game by embracing your strongest connection to the many options in HPS is always a great way to get the ball rolling and will help set the tone for the others that may not speak to you as much.

Personal Influences: Finally, and most important, is what makes you, the Director, excited. What drives you and inspires your creativity? Remember, the Director is as much a creator in this game as the Writers and you have as much to add to your version of High Plains Samurai as anyone else. Don’t know the exact history, duties, and fine points of Japanese samurai? Then don’t worry about it. Show us what makes them cool to you while remaining respectful of the original influences that made it so cool in the first place.

Wardrobe: How do the people of Serenity Falls dress? As much as this is an aesthetic question, it’s also a functional question. You’ll notice there’s no mention in the HPS core rulebook how the people of Serenity Falls cope with the unending sandstorm or how the Watchdogs are able to keep watch in such blinding conditions. The way people dress reveals a lot about their history and their culture. Use their attire to unmask secrets of how the One Land operates. Do the people of Serenity Falls wear ceremonial masks to protect themselves from the choking sand or do they simply wrap a scarf over their mouths with sunglasses? What do the warriors of Monsoon wear to protect themselves from the countless number of poisonous plants surrounding their homeland? Are the barbarian clans of Khar’tep known to wear furs or wools to keep warm atop the Great Mother?

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Creating New Characters On The Fly

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Our lives are surrounded by the intersecting stories of other characters. Sometimes those moments are no more than an accidental glance; others find two opponents face-to-face in battle. Without a balance of these fleeting and significant moments, we cannot grow.

Hi, everyone. I’m Todd Crapper, the creator and lead designer of the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game. I’d like to welcome you to this special section of the HPS website because this is the part where I’m really going to geek out about the game. Much of what you’ll find on this site further details the setting of the One Land inspiring you to create something really awesome for your stories. But this section, the Path to Enlightenment, is where I get into the mechanics.

Over the course of six years, I’ve run a lot of HPS games and watched this thing grow in my head and come alive at gaming tables around the world. Here, I’m going to teach you additional ways to utilize the game and maximize your characters and the method by which everyone contributes to the story. If you have any topic ideas or questions on playing HPS, send them to enlighten@highplainssamurai.com and I will answer you directly and/or use it for a future post.

So, let’s get started with something all Directors need to master if they’re planning on running a fast-paced game of HPS: instant character creation.

What Is Instant Character Creation?

In a heavily improvised game like High Plains Samurai, perhaps one of the greatest challenges for a Director is instant character creation. Unlike Writers, a Director is expected to create characters as they are introduced to the story and some of them become part of the action and roll dice. While there are guidelines in the High Plains Samurai Roleplaying Game core rulebook for creating major characters, supporting characters, and extras, there are some tips for whipping together ones in just a few minutes during a game that will endure long after their heads roll across the floor.

Character creation is a simple yet diverse series of stages. For the Writers, the depths their lead characters can acquire are rather impressive. Yet Directors do not have the liberty of making signatures for extras or even motivations and hindrances for supporting characters. These characters have to “pop” from the descriptions and come alive in the players’ minds. When done well, even a simple extra can suddenly become a daunting recurring villain that haunts the lead characters from behind the scenes. For example, my home group recently finished their rendition of the Black Scorpion storyline from High Plains Samurai: Legends and found themselves struggling to take out a catar ninja at the base of the watchtower. This fight soon spilled into the basement as one of the leads telekinetically caused the floor to collapse, and it became apparent this lone extra with no more than 3 Vitality was no simple goon without a name. So the Writers agreed she should escape and come back as a recurring villain for our Deadly Shadow. I’ve now adapted her into a supporting character with a couple of perks up her sleeve and even have plans to upgrade her into a major character so that her Vitality can grow and keep pace with our Shadow’s… a sign of a good recurring villain is their ability to stay one step ahead, after all.

Six Recommendations for Creating Memorable Instant Characters: The Clickbait Edition

An example of why people who can afford them love having a warmech around. Art by Kieron O’Gorman.

What follows in this first instalment of the Path to Enlightenment series comes from nearly 100 characters created over the six years in which this game was in development. Some barely lasted a few minutes, others have gone on to become integral parts of an ongoing storyline. Most were extras, some were supporting characters. Many of them died a gruesome death.

(Remember, you can find a complete checklist for creating all four types of characters starting on page 134 of the core rulebook.)

  1. Use the Five Questions: These were intended for lead characters as guidelines for devising new potentials but that does not mean they are limited to the stories’ heroes. Choose one of the Five Questions to create potentials that hold up against the standards set by the lead characters.
  2. Make the First Potential a Quote: Whenever a new character suddenly appears in a description and it seems as if this character will mean something to the lead characters’ pursuits, it’s time to add pencil to paper. But what should that very first potential be? Whenever any player introduced a new character into the scene, what was the first aspect of their appearance/demeanor/abilities they provided? These can make for a good first potential as it incorporates what triggered their creation in the first place.
  3. Their Purpose Is Their Potential: Extras have only one potential and it can never start at higher than a d6. Considering their sole purpose (doing a poor job of trying not to get slaughtered by the lead characters), their one potential needs to cut straight to the chase because it is rare for extras for carry over into the next scene. Whatever it is they are there for in this scene, that is their potential.
  4. Dishing Out the Damage: If you intend to incorporate some risk and danger into the scene, give your extras’ resource a damage bonus instead. Even though they cannot shift, extras with those sharpened swords and smoking machine guns can whittle down the lead characters’ Vitality should they end up inflicting damage over any other complications. Not only that, the lead characters may be more inclined to shift the results in their favour to avoid damage in the first place. Writers tend to be less inclined to take damage from extras but could still end up shifting enough results that you whittle them down a couple extra Vitality nonetheless.
  5. A Resource You Can Rely On: If what you’re looking for is a chance for the leads to gain some Vitality after a fight rather than lose them, be sure to create a truly helpful resource for any Director-controlled characters and give it a step bonus. While supporting characters and extras never start with more than a d6 on any potential, a step bonus will bring any of them up to a d8 and put them on par with many “fresh out of the box” leads.
  6. Resources Bring Out Their Best Qualities: If you’re playing HPS, odds are good you’re an action film fan of some kind. And that means you can think of an awesome villain in a movie who never said a word, never had a name, but kicked ass because of a particular weapon, fighting style, or article of clothing that turned out to be useful in a fight. While there is little that can mechanically cause an extra or supporting character to stand out, their resources are as varied as your imagination.

The Right Amount of Vitality

When you create a major or supporting character, their starting Vitality will play a significant factor in their impact on the lead characters’ lives. So just what is the right starting amount? It depends on how long you want them to last in a fight scene against the total number of lead characters involved. 15 Vitality will allow them to go toe-to-toe against a single lead character and hold their own against a party of three for a couple of rounds. Anything more than that and the character will benefit from starting with a Vitality of 20 or more (see page 63 in the core rulebook for stronger characters). While supporting characters are certainly allowed to start with more than 20 Vitality, it is not recommended unless there is a reason for it in the story. For example, a stone golem guarding a lost temple in the Wastes could reasonably offer a significant challenge in a fight.

Duration is the key to determining a character’s starting Vitality. For every round you anticipate for that character to last in a fight scene, they should have 3 or 4 Vitality. This formula supposes an average group of 3-4 lead characters in the scene. Therefore, if you want the character to last at least 4 rounds, they should start with anywhere from 12 to 16 Vitality. If you feel more Vitality is the key to a “better” scene, consider making them a major character.

Here is the key to remember when it comes to extras and supporting characters: their Vitality simply determines how much of a beating they can take before they go down. Unlike major characters, these less significant figures in the One Land do not gain any additional benefits with more Vitality baked into them. Extras simply work in groups that can get bigger but with no mechanical benefit. A supporting character could start off with 20+ Vitality but all this does is stretch out the fight needlessly. Without the power to rise in strength like a major character, the Director risks creating a longer and drawn out scene that could have been sliced by one or two rounds.

As for major characters, a general rule is to have each one’s Vitality start out at half of the lead characters’ combined Vitality scores (at the time of their creation) with +2 Vitality for every permanent step bonus the lead characters placed on their potentials. For example, a group of 3 lead characters with a total of 54 Vitality and two permanent step bonuses to their potentials should find themselves staring down a major character with 31 Vitality (or rounded down to 30).