A toy game from the 2016 game design advent calendar.

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The spider Hersilia in the picture above "has an interesting way of capturing prey. Rather than making a web that captures prey directly, they lay a light coating of threads over an area of tree bark and wait hidden in plain sight for an insect to stray onto that patch. Once that occurs, they direct their spinnerets toward their prey and circle it; all the while casting silk on it. When the hapless insect has been thoroughly immobilized, they can bite it through its new shroud." (Wikimedia) That's fascinating! And pretty terrifying. The predator/prey dynamic also reminded me Boids, an algorithm for simulating flocking behavior. Let's mix them up and make a game.

You are a member of an elite team of soldiers, one of many, tasked with defending the enclave from the Beasts Beyond the Walls. You've been training for this your whole life; everyone has. The Beasts are monstrous, and threaten everything you hold dear. Your team is strong, and you and your allies have all suffered and sacrificed to destroy the menace.

It's your mission, and that of your teammates, to seek out and kill the enemy before it even has a chance to breach the walls. Go out, prepare your plans and lay your traps, and keep your people safe.

Requires:

• A bunch of dice (again, I know. I'll get off the dice pool train eventually)
• Some players, 3 or more. Hopefully at least 4.
• Some paper to write things down and places to put dice.
• Pencils and erasers

Rules:

Play fiction-first. Anything mechanical must also have a fictional manifestation.

One person is the Beast, and acts as GM where necessary. The other players are members of a team of soldiers, sent out across the wall to combat the beasts. There are many beasts, or there is only one beast, but they are one in the Beast.

Players, answer the following questions and write down the answers. Assign two dice to one and a die each to the others:

• Your Monstrosity: What aspect of the Beast do you hate in yourself?
• Your Hatreds:
  • Who or what have you lost to the Beast?
  • What are you willing to do to destroy the Beast?

The session is broken into two different types of scenes, R&R and Hunts, alternating one after the other.

R&R scenes are pretty freeform, and consist of interaction between the team members. Use the rules to follow as a guide for what you should try to accomplish during these scenes. The Beast should act as GM, where necessary, but most such responsibilities should just be left to the players. These scenes need not take place at home or in safety, they just need to focus on the player characters.

Hunts consist solely of hunting and fighting the Beast. These might be different beasts altogether, but they share the same spirit: the hated Beast. Begin in the middle of the action. Players set traps and lay any remaining plans, should they have time. Until the players enact their plan, the Beast will have the upper hand; the players must rely on their preparation and dice accrued to survive and prevail.

R&R

(These rules are preceded by which component of the Boids algorithm they represent, cohesion, separation, or alignment)

Cohesion - When you accept a teammate's Hatred, write down their Hatred as your own and give it a die.

Separation - When you reject a teammate's Monstrosity, write your rejection down and give it a die.

Alignment - When you follow a teammate's direction, accepting their plan as your own, say what you add to the plan. This might be a trap you set, support you offer, or resources you bring to bear. Write it down, and give it a die.

Hunts

When you enact your plan, everyone rolls all appropriate dice, the Beast for herself and the players for the team. Whichever side rolls higher will win the fight, but we need to see what happens to get there.

In turn, the Beast and the players will take action against the other side. They bid two dice to do it, and the other side responds with their own bid. The higher bid comes out on top for this particular action.

When you use a die assigned to something written down, erase it and lose the die.

Whenever dice are bid, the bidder must also say what happens fictionally that the dice represent. Players, bring in your preparation and plans, say how they help you or go awry. Use anything you wrote down during the last R&R scene. Beast, be a monster and come up with crazy beasty stuff.

GM/Beast:

You're the Beast, mostly. Do GM stuff when things need arbitration or the momentum is flagging during R&R scenes: introduce NPCs, pose challenges to the players, ask questions.

During Hunts, choose how many dice you roll as the Beast. This is a weakness of the game (why should players acquire more dice if you can just decide to have more to combat them?), but can probably be countered by deciding how many dice the Beast has in advance. However many dice you have, roll them all when the plan is enacted.

Your goal is to highlight the hatred in the hearts of the PCs. The Beast is not the real monster in this game, the PC's are. Show in little ways how the Beast is simply minding its own business, or just an animal following its nature, or a native facing extinction from the invaders behind the walls. It fights, and it kills, but only in response to the PCs' hatred.

Notes:

You roll all dice at the beginning of conflicts, and find out immediately whether or not you'll win. And then you still have to play the fight out. So where's the fun in that? It's in the playing out of the fight, and what happened to get you to that fight. The players embraced hatred for the Beast during the R&R scene, and now it comes out all at once. Everyone at the table now gets to control the pace of the fight, the give and take of momentum, as they all aim for the pre-rolled ending. And that's okay, because you aren't at the table to see how the monster-hunting goes.

You're not playing to find out who wins or loses, or what it costs to kill the Beast. You're playing to find out what sort of monsters the PCs will become to do it. You're playing to see how hatred for the out-group grows and corrupts.

It's a worthy goal to play and create games that convey human experiences, even extremely negative ones. Now, whether or not this game succeeds at this goal is a separate question. But it's a game, it's a cool concept, and it's a goal worth pursuing.

--Karaktakus the Beast

Prompt/cover photo: Wikimedia Commons