Fictive Resolution: or I'm going crazy

In my last post I talked a lot about Blade in the Dark, fictional positioning and Pyrrhic Weaselry. Here's something gameable for those things inspired primarily by this post

Problems with stakes are resolved with wagers. 

<A digression already. Problems w/o stakes aren't interesting. "Who will pay for the party rations?" is not interesting unless counting coin is that integral to the game (Hint: it usually isn't in my games, except maybe early on). Stakes without problems aren't "adventurable". "This relic could end the world but its nice and safe with us, the good guys" isn't an adventure.>

A wager is your basic unit of resolving issues, what might otherwise be Blade's Actions, Pyrrhic Weaselry's Intents or any version of D&D's skill checks. However, in order to resolve the wager you must of course decide the stakes and bet something. Maybe the stakes are "escaping with the girl" or "leaving here alive" or "killing that monster". 

First decide the difficulty of the wager. It can be Easy (+1), Difficult (-1) or Hard (-2). In addition to the modifier, it changes the outcomes. 

Next choose your wager or what you're willing to lose. If its attacking someone it might be your weapon or your body or even your life. In a social situation it might be composure, pride or again your sword. Or hell bet your life to persuade the king, I'm not your mom. This is what is damaged or lost if you roll poorly. You can bet as many things as you like, we're just counting the highest result. 

Then, allocate dice values to your bet based on the Quality of the wagers: D4 for Cheap, D6 for Modest and D12 for Luxurious. Your life is always Luxurious, the end all be all of bets.

He does not have your best interests in mind 

The results are simple. 

• 1-3 is a Dangerous result, success at the cost of what you bet. Your sword gains many nicks or breaks. You lose face or your pride is heavily wounded. Or you gain mortal or even fatal wounds
• A 4-5 is a Daunting result, success at a limited cost to what you wagered. One or two nicks to the old armor, a faux pas or being disarmed in a fight
• A 6+ is sweet sweet success with no cost.
• Don't forget to modify results by the difficulty of the wager

Recall difficulty changes outcomes. A Hard test, for example defending from the attack of a vampire lord, shifts the outcomes so that 1-3 is Deadly and a 4 or 5 is Dangerous and 6 is now success with Daunting results. This usually means extra stakes or negative effects if you fail the wager. A vampire doesn't just give you a mortal injury, he also curses you or knocks you prone or drains your blood to boot. It's a loss of the wager and extra fictive positioning. You lose more than you bet. 

Now you may ask, why does the opponent not bid anything? Well, they do but it doesn't need dice rolls. As a referee your job is to adjudicate the reactions of NPCs including monsters. I think paradoxically adding dice makes it harder to decide what they're willing to lose and when to quit. Besides if the players win the wager, you know the stakes and you should already know if this NPC is willing to die or not for the wager (hint almost never). When it doubt, Reaction Dice it out. 

Additionally, rolling above an 8 (or 10+? Haven't decided) leads to Complications. For example, a back-alley fight starts with your Vice dealer, and you pull out your flashy Magic Sword of Decapacitation to hack them apart. You wager your Magic Sword (D12, all magic items are Luxurious) and roll an 11! Off comes his head and his buddies run off. And tell their friends about your magic sword. And they jump you in bed that night. With a wizard. 

Once the wager is over, reassess and if no one gives up, start over. You cannot bet any of those things again this fight. 

<Digression. Now I'd like more immediate complications, but I like that idea that flashing a lot of wealth or magic or making grandiose bets has repercussions. It feels pulpy like Fafrhd and Grey Mouser attracting weirdos because they're being so much larger than life. But that is not necessarily part of the fiction of the Wager so I'll have to look into this. Maybe offer players a "double or nothing" where they gain an additional fictional advantage (like high ground) on a second success or else a fiasco ensues or else enemies get advantage. Like confirming a critical in 3E if a confirmed critical could also lead to a failure.>

Now the real issue is linking these to Vices and Heart. 

Now Vice, I think lets you wager Self-Control in the sense that every time you wager it, you lose it irrespective of the outcome of the roll. This is similar to the previous system (spend a D6 to "ignore negative outcomes") but is now more integral because, now they don't have to risk damaging their shit. The players don't want to wager their cool sword, bag of gold or pretty face so they wager Spite and feel no great loss until it comes time to lose agency and act on those flaws and vices. Borrowing trouble from the future you might say. 

Heart is the much harder one to work into all this. Just Wagering Heart doesn't feel thematically correct. Heart is the thing that keeps them from becoming villains, and all the characters begin play with Hearts of Gold they try to hide from the world because it is a traumatizing place. To wager and lose it would mean to lose a piece of themselves not so easily regained. Obviously, the answer lies in Dogs in the Vineyard. 

Dogs in the Vineyard

Dogs in the Vineyard -vineyard -vineyard. 

Man sometimes you read stuff that just alters your brain chemistry a little bit. An errant long-gone commenter from this fun post mentioned Dogs and I had never heard of it before. Check Wikipedia. An RPG for playing fictional Mormons in a fictional Utah. Huh. It won awards. Huh. It's really good. HUH.

It somehow manages to do that beautiful thing where it is both fun to read (it doesn't necessarily read like a technical manual (which RPGs are, though we seem to forget that)), forces you to transcend while you read it and does a great job of not being about what the game is about. 

The map is not the territory.

Lemme explain. It gives you rules for resolving issues. You decide the stakes, roll the applicable dice which represent your connection to the stakes via relationships and qualities and then the adversary, usually a prideful man of the Faith, can either fold, "See" to meet those stakes or Raise a la poker. This goes back and forth until one of you loses or escalates to the next level of violence to obtain more dice. Words and arguments become manhandling become fighting become fighting with guns. But this isn't what the game is about. It's about being someone with absolute power within your faith to do as you think is best for a community that you know for a fact is on track to being controlled by a great evil. 

The RPG is not the game you play. It's an imperfect model of something someone wrote to try and get you to achieve a similar experience to one they have had. The map is not the territory, but it might prove useful. I think this might help with the Heart issue. 

The game is about grappling with Heart, a stand in for goodness, mercy, wisdom, love and all that jazz, the kinds of things we get when we never fall off that wagon. I'm going to take a page out of Dog's book and change Heart to something simple, so the rules don't get in the way. Dog's begins by telling you your character has absolute authority within their jurisdiction. No elaboration, just a fact. Similarly: 

Your character is a thug or scoundrel with a Heart of Gold. While there are many unsavory, unscrupulous things they would do for personal gain there is a golden rule they follow, whether they would admit it or not: They would never turn down someone genuinely asking for aid, especially if they have nothing to offer. They've been on the other end of that stick and with a different ending, one full of vice and misery. 

Heart is not something you can traditionally wager. If the stakes are not about helping someone who needs it, you cannot wager it, that's the domain of Spite and Vice. Additionally, in this heartbreaker there is no way to avoid the effects of magic, save Heart, so its niche is well established. 

A Non-Exhaustive List of Things You Could Wager

• Tactical positioning e.g. a flanking bonus or high ground or tempo
• Arms and armor and equipment 
• Gold, whole sacks and chests of it
• Surprise 
• Dignity, Face or Honor (if you have any)
• Skill 
• All these mooks I hired

Heart-Breaker Synthesis Post

 Woe betide me, I find myself in a fey mood after reading others' posts. I really need to get less suggestable if I'm ever going to finish this labor of love. I read these wonderful posts over at Was it Likely's blog including their own wonderful ruleset and has me rethinking my resolution mechanics. Just as well, as I was reading over my "bibliography" I reread this gem and damn it here I am rethinking everything. 

The essence of my heartbreaker is playing vice-ridden thieves and thugs with hearts of gold. Its main conceit is about the contention between one's Vice that they feed with stealing and dungeoneering and the goodness that lurks inside their Heart under all that trauma. In fact, one of the main stats is literally called Heart of Gold. I put it right in the middle of the character sheet and everything!

So cute! I call it the HOG bc it's my fantasy heartbreaker and you can't tell me what to do. 

Otherwise, it's anyone's B/X OSR-ified retro clone with a roll under stats and an Oddlike to-hit system. There are 5 Heart Skills/Procedures you rank from 1-5 and that's how big your dice pool is for each Procedure. It has six unique saves (bc I love OD&D's so much) that are roll under on a D6 and rolling under your ability scores is called a Test which can be Hard (roll under half).  

But my favorite part, the part that made me want to write the damn thing is the Flaws. The Flaws are the three negative aspects of your character, the Vice, Hunger and Itch, that have kept your character alive:

        Vice is what makes the pain go away. The physical dependencies.

        Itch has how the pain presents. The traumas and trauma responses.

        Hunger is what pain makes you do. Like destroy, isolate and betray

Each one is represented by a playing card you draw randomly at character creation, which is anti-backstory. When you activate the Flaw you become more affected by it. For example, if your Hunger is Wrath, then you tap the card you must make a save to avoid being wrathful anytime the situation arises. While it is untapped, you have total agency. But be careful when you give in though, because your character may begin to act outside your control. Its fun! But why would you ever tap your Flaw?

Because each one holds a single D6 called Spite. You can spend Spite to checks notes... damn I've changed this a million times. Currently its "ignore negative outcomes"? What in the hell does that mean. Does this refer to saves? Damage? Wounds? Idk man it used to be "add the result to a roll" or "reroll" or "roll with advantage" but nothing ever stuck or felt right. Spite isn't something that empowers your character, at least not long-term. It's a survival mechanism. It's the behavior of hurt individuals that is sometimes useful for fighting monsters. Those are the same thing really when I introduce monsters into the game as symbolic of a problem.

Okay maybe the Heart of Gold section is better? Let's see right from the document:

"You are at war with yourself, a chrysalis in peril. Your most powerful resource is your Heart. Find and place an Ace of Hearts in front of you, and 1d12 upon it. When you would need to empower an attack, Test or Save, use this instead. To do this, tap the card, turning it sideways. It is expended when you choose one of the options below and you become Vulnerable afterwards, bearing your love brazenly on your sleeve. You may untap it later, when you are safe, fed or dead. 

• An Empowered attack can either cleave though multiple enemies or deal +1d12 damage to one. Evil creatures detest these attacks.

• An Empowered Test can either use D12 instead of a D20 or ignore the repercussions of a failed Test (the test still fails but you ignore negative effects as a result)

• An Empowered Save can either succeed automatically or be added to an ally's save.

• If tapped, you ignore the effects of a spell. If used to protect an ally, you both ignore the effects of the spell. 

Spent Heart is added to the XP Bowl and measured against unspent Spite. If it rolls higher than Spite when determining XP your heart is brimming and Threatened, ready to grow a size. If it happens again it grows in size, adding one die. If you gain new Hearts, they share this pool of dice. If you ever roll a 1 on this die, you're Heartbroken. It weighs one stone and one day you can let it go."

OK this is a little better.  Little bit less garbage. But the main issue is its not... how did Ms. Screwhead put it on her blog?

These mechanics "fundamentally distance the players from the fiction"

At the end of the day this heartbreaker is about Heart and the difficult journey of grappling with our own flaws in a non-binary system. Our Flaws including our physical dependencies never go away and frequently control us, but they aren't ever eliminated. I want to capture that feeling, the frustration and the triumph of the two in tandem. But tapping a card with a heart on it like a power up ain't it chief. And to some degree I don't know what is. 

Rules vs Design

I am tinkerer, no more no less. I tinkered with 5e combat until I got here, by own damn system, 80% yoinked bits from a million blogs, 15% hacks of hacks and like 5% ideas comma original comma good or bad TBD comma for sale never worn. While I'm happy with the system I have and it works ok from playtesting, it's not tight enough. Flaws feel tacked onto a B/X-esque chassis (they are) when they should be front and center and they don't compete with Heart the way I want them to beyond XP. That can be fixed with some better rules and not hiding apes. This goes back to Gorinich's post about Creeds. It would take some finagling (there are three tables of 13 flaws) but I think I could they could apply here:

• Wrathful
• Draw blood 
• Show mercy and restraint

         Instead of gaining XP from these actions you either gain Spite for the normal tendency and Heart for the bolded tendency. You can hold up to three Spite (one for each Flaw) or Heart equal to the size of your Heart of Gold (which goes from 1 to 5). I still need to determine what Spite and Heart do and that leads to my next point. 

The issues I mention above can be solved by rules but none of those rules will solve the issue I have with the fact that the rules feel to disconnected from the game world. They are in not diegetic yes but even more than that they don't feel evocative enough. And I think that is not a rules problem but a design problem. 

I've thinking a lot about Pyrrhic Weaselry and also Blades in the Dark and how they talk about fictional positioning. BitD is famously fiction first, as you will read ad nauseum online but often the actions you take in that weight don't feel like they have weight in the fiction and it was a hard curve for me to learn. One Wreck action could be a whole scene's worth of fighting and I suppose it's a "fictive granularity" that I'm looking for. Pyrrhic Weaselry seems to achieve that, where the inherent qualities of a character as well as their equipment and actions affect outcomes. The leap across pits because they are strong and they cannot if they are not, so they need to find another way. As far as this translates to my heartbreaker I suppose I want "emotional granularity". I want the players to consider the fragile emotional states of these characters. I do not want them doing kind deeds against their Creeds to power up before a fight add then press a heart button to add smites to every attack. That's akin to the paradox of friendship Zedeck Siew writes about that haunts me. You might argue that that's just a play style and to that I say phooey. You can write rules around games to make games about that thing. I just have to get the design right. 

Back to Blades, I've been thinking about Position and Effect and how it might be a good place to start. They are independent variables that can be summed up as "risk to you" and "what you get out of it". From their website, sniping an unalerted nearby gang has a Position of Controlled, (very little risk to you for taking the shot) and an Effect of Great; sniping an unaware target is gonna get great results. However, the second shot might be tricky when they see your position and scatter; now its Risky Position and Limited effect. This effects consequences and harm and so on and so forth. I like the structure. 

Pyrrhic Weaslry follows a similar mechanic after a fashion. An Intent is declared, and you must, in the parlance of Traveller, roll a 10+ to succeed. Whether or not the roll is even required is a measure of your traits, entirely qualitative. Dealing damage is a kind of Intent based on fictional positioning that you can either accept and compromise about, what I would call a kind of fictional parry or try to avoid entirely at the risk of taking the full Intent, what I might call a fictional dodge. 

I like both of these so here's some ideas I have:

• You have emotional positioning, the mental state of your glass cannon bastard. It's usually somewhere around "Risky" though I don't know what you would call that. Tense? Hurt? Raw? Not neutral, that's for well-adjusted peasants and priests and what not. "On Edge" maybe. At any rate, when their Vice is satisfied you're Chill and when you've been pushed over the edge you're "Craving" or perhaps more accurately "Desperate". While Chill, your predilections have no hold on you, complete agency. When On Edge, a save may be required based on your Creed. Once you're Desperate, all bets are off, your agency in tempting situations is gone! (Death to Agency!)
  
  And where Effect would go I think I want something along the lines of Deadly, Dangerous and Limited. A Deadly strike gives Mortal Wounds while a Dangerous one "only" gives Grevious Wounds. Limited effects are the cut and scrapes the OSR is obsessed with describing on a miss or near miss. 
  
  Rather than be independent of one another, I think these things should correlate closely. If you tap into a Flaw or consume your Vice, your emotional Position and Effect shift. You become Desperate (if you we're only On Edge before) but your Effect goes up. Think wounded animal, lashing out when its backed into a corner. If your Heart is in the right place, perhaps your effect can simply never be Limited. 
  
  
• Another idea I had already lines up with some of the rules I have was to make all challenges and tests Easy, Difficult or Hard with all skills being Cheap, Modest or Luxurious (in line with the rest of the game where everything falls into one of those categories and correlates to a D4, D6 or D12). Difficult Tests are your standard roll-unders while a Hard test is roll under half your Score and an Easy one might be 5+ your Score or maybe under half again (moot if you have a score higher than 14). I like the idea that dodging the blow of a powerful vampire is a Hard Test of DEX or alternatively having a Luxurious dodge skill and getting to roll D12. 
  
  
• In a peasant or magician's hands, all weapons are merely Dangerous and nothing short of certain Vices will change that. But in a mercenary's hands? Deadly. I like the idea of a fighter being able to shift combat related tests to their advantage, turning Hard maneuvers or attacks (against a vampire for example) into merely difficult ones, or impossible tasks into Hard ones with limited success. 
  
  [This actually similar to a series of posts from here I plan to do a post about I'll write next/later.]

Well that was a lot of rambling. Think I have some ideas I'll discuss later. 

Let's Crawl! New Moon Barrens, Part 3: Region(s)

[This one's been sitting in the drafts a while and I've moved on to new campaigns but I figured this should be posted for posterity! Enoy :]

Now that we have a hexcrawl procedure, we can get to the fun part, actually filling in the world here. However, it has changed somewhat since last we saw it.

Glow Up. 

After rereading THIS (and not wanting to fill in over 100 hexes again) I decided to revamp the old hex map into something more interesting and digestible. Observe the Poison Swamp in Hex 5.00 and the UNASSAILABLE CLIFFS OF THE FOUL DARK MAGE MEZZIZAR in Hexes 9.02 and 9.03. The Barren itself is now ~100 ft. lower than the surrounding geography, fitting of the Krakatoa equivalent explosion that happened there a century ago. The dotted purple lines are ley lines a la Dolemwood and wherever they cross you can find wizards, points of power or dungeons. 

The Barrens Proper

(The Brown area in the center)

Ok so take Death Valley and put a moon above it in a geostationary orbit. Now fill it full of Mad Max style barbarians, Moon Beasts, ghosts, androids and a triumvirate of beholder, dragon and lich and you got yourself a great place to adventure! Or die! Probably die!

A century ago, a Conan-type named Dyn Cryf ventured into the New Moon, intent on getting to the bottom of its water theft. While he was never seen again, a few days later the New Moon pulsed, cracked and released a shockwave that tore asunder everything within almost 100 miles. 

Its now a desolate place, but certainly not an empty one. While I don't exactly know why the moon is here I have a few ideas brewing. It represents a warp in the Rainbow Veil, a great border between Reality and Un-Reality, a place here things That Aren't Quite Right come from, such as the beholder milling about. The Prismatic nature of the Veil is under strain and so its guardians are also being summoned here, great Reds Knights and Yellow Emissaries, trying to figure out what's going on. The Moon is almost certainly some great technological marvel from forwards, backwards or sideways in time, possibly with a broken AI. From it spills forth Moon Beasts, Moon Men and Moon Goblins. 

Techno-aberrant prismatic space-time ruptures are common here, usually in the form of holograms, glimpses into alternative timelines and the summoning of aberrations. This of course gets Arthur C. Clark-ed into tales of ghosts, portals and monsters that populate the tables below. 

2. A Dragon

 I already have two other dragons in other parts of the map and I decided they probably want no part of the nonsense going on over in the Barrens. So, I added a third. A weird one. 

What are dragons? In my games traditionally, they are symbols of avarice and mania, each one obsessing over a unique material in addition to gold, their draconic lust. They are products of enormous hoards, spontaneously appearing from them, wholly formed, or else they are kings or adventurers who obsess and hoard enough, long enough. I think this one was a combination, a Warrior-King, an Atilla type, who raided and raided and plumbed the depths of even older Elvish tombs for riches. Soon he became known as the Wyrm of the West or something fearsome like that, and it's only a matter of time before someone like that becomes indistinguishable from a dragon. 

Suppose that dragon was cutting up the region when a multidimensional bomb when off, scattering their mounted hoard to the winds. And so a ghost remains. Or is it two realities on top of one another, a blurry figure occasionally quantum tunneling? For a king and the land are one, and his land has been warped. And a dragon losing his hoard has more reason to haunt a region than any other creature. So he hangs around, haunting his old fields of probability, seeking his lost treasure. 

So, when a 2 comes up, players will hear the sounds of battle on horseback, smell blood and iron, see the shine of gold and feel power. Spoor will be the muted modulated sounds of a man's screams and a dragon's roar interplayed on top of one another. And should they run into the dragon itself, it will be invisible. Sometimes. Like a radio trying to tune into a fight with a dragon or boxing a dragon's shadow. So why does it scream like a man?

This also means I'll need to seed a lot of cool treasure in the area. I think each piece collected should a). give you cool warrior-dragon-king powers and b) get the shit haunted out of you as you increase the likelihood you collapse his probability field. Getting all the pieces should probably summon him. Perhaps he'll reward his faithful servants. 

3-5. Moon Beasts, Moon Men and Moon Goblins 

Warped in from gods-know-not-where, Moon Beasts are medium to huge creatures, one enormous jaw with multitudinous grasping tentacles, which they drag themselves around with. Possessing some strange semblance of intelligence, the roam about the Barrens looking for people to capture. They have a stupefying prismatic ray attack which lowers intelligence and a song they sing from their crystal hearts which infects the mind of the unintelligent with moon sickness. Once infected, victims can only stare blankly upward and sway. This makes them easy targets for the Beasts who then carry them away, back to the Moon for some nefarious purpose. If they aren't hungry, in which case they eat you. 

This is sort of their MO

This was also my first real experiment with writing monsters using Mindstorm's nested hit dice. We'll see how it pans out in game. 

Greater Moon Beast [HD 8, MV 12, M10]

Moonskin - While in sunlight, the Moon Beast is impervious to harm. This is common knowledge. However, this could be negated by shadow, a blanket, paint or anything else that prevents sunlight from reaching its skin. This is less common knowledge. 

Tentacles x 4 (1 HD per). Grab and slam for 1d8 damage. 

Cavernous Prismatic Maw (3 HD). Can bite for 3d8. The Moon Beast spends 1 round charging up a stupefying prismatic beam which it sweeps in a 90-degree arc in front of itself. Being struck by it reduces Intelligence by 1d6+1. Its heart can be seen during this time, though it is protected by Moonskin.

Crystal Moon Heart (1 HD, Lethal) When the Moon Beast screeches, save vs terror or become moon sick, unable to do anything but sway and stare upwards at the moon. Creatures with 3 Int. or less automatically fail. Its crystal here vibrates sickeningly in its gullet during this time. 

I wish I had a snazzy way of formatting it but there it is. I think it's a good monster for a few reasons. The sunlight puzzle has no predetermined solutions but you can't brute force your way through it. With equipment as simple as a blanket you could defeat it, but so too could you cover it in flour, lure it underground, or quite simply, come back at night. It rewards planning. I'm really hoping the first time the players encounter one, they realize its mouth is big enough to hold them while it closes and they smash its heart, instantly killing it. 

Moon Men

Moon Men however, are entirely different operators. Basically, I think they're the insane minions of the New Moon, whatever that means. I love using androids and all the tropes associated with them, so I think the moon men will be some mix up of Men in Black, androids and doppelgangers. I imagine their skin ripples and can mold itself so they can pass as ordinary folk, probably to aid the Moon in its now failing infiltration. They're probably also twitchy as all hell, broken down, gone rogue or truly believe they are who they're impersonating. Or perhaps they're reinventing themselves, since their "god" went spastic. The party stumbling onto a group of malfunctioning androids, armed with primitive spears, worshipping a defunct AI as a god? Rad.

The players will encounter two types, the first groups of ragged, half-human insane types and more well to-do, pre-transformed Infiltrators. 

Moon Men [HD 1 and up, MV 10, M12)

1d6+2. Each group will have one Android Captain (HD 4), 1 Android Soothsayer (2 HD, has a semi-working connection to the New Moon) and a Great Pod (4HD) with them. Their great pod is a piece of tech, hidden within a ceramic vase or other that they can charge up at, attempt communication with the New Moon via and use for other such android-y things. While it functions or they're radioed into it, they are deadly and organized. A Captain can use it to power an artefact.

Radio Pack and Antennae - The Soothsayer will have a backpack which holds a transceiver. While it works, they are extremely coordinated and have perfect communication. Destroy it and all other Moon Men will spasm for a round and then act as if stunned on subsequent rounds. The soothsayer will spend a turn fixing it. Each Moon Man also has an antennae connecting it to the soothsayer.

Synth Skin - Given time, the android can assume the form of a humanoid, its skin supple, transient. The new skin can be original, bespoke or a simulacrum of another humanoid. Save vs Terror the first time you see this occur or gain 1d6 Terror. It has damage reduction of 2.

Insane Circuitry - The android has no glands to give it fear and to stay it from its mission. It does not make morale checks. It may consider retreat, diplomacy and fighting to the death in equal measure but always logically. It's also fucked somehow:

1. Fried CPU - Breaks down if it has to fight more than three enemies at once
2. Frayed Wires - Lightning arcs off of it when struck, striking a random nearby source of metal, usually an allied moon man
3. Faulty Actuators - If it is knocked down, it is unable to get up
4. Defunct Sorting Algorithm - During a fight, cannot tell friend from foe easily or from far away

Moon Goblins [HD 1-1, MV 11, M6]

Moon Goblins round out the regional trio of weirdoes brough by the New Moon. I think they're more like stowaways on the New Moon, though on some days, goblins come from the moon, speaking to their mercurial nature. 

<Aside. Goblins come from everywhere and can be found everywhere. They are dark fairies, and psychic leftovers and also magic. Where refuse piles up and mixes with negative energy, goblins arise fully formed. Where ley lines cross they claw their way from the earth like tubers. The Mother of All Monsters births them from her back like a great Surinam Toad. They are magic's answer to convergent evolution, the same form being reached many different ways. Goblinization instead of carcinization.>

They are like ordinary goblins, but albino with rheumy red eyes, wrinkly little bodies and longer ears. They have more skin than they ought to have and sharp little claws. When their teeth fall out, they replace them with shards of metal from the Moon. They are generally less malicious than their cousins and speak of "going home" and "hating the oscillations". They struggle to pay attention because they are out of sync with time here, drifting forwards and backwards relative to local time. They may perceive questions from several minutes into the future and answer them before you ask them or answer one again from several minutes ago. This gives them awful headaches and they'd rather avoid you. They're extremely perceptive to the moon and its changes, even more than the Moon Men because they understand it on a fundamental level, not reliant on its insane AI. 

They're a bit fuzzy about time and space here, making fighting them difficult. They may wink out of existence, only for the moon to drag them back here 12 feet to the left and 15 seconds ago. They can blink around and the more of them there are, the easier this is to control making fighting a horde near impossible. They may all jump to a minute into the future, all on top of you or coordinate arrow fire through time and space. 

However, they are generally docile and wish to go "home" rather than be here and they hate moon beasts with a passion, for they happily gobble the goblins up rather than kidnap them. My guess is that Moon Beasts capture human, the Moon men replace them, and the poor capture human after being drained of excess water, is turned into a moon goblin and used for labor. These are the lucky ones that escaped. 

8-9 Global Threats 

The Eelmen used to thrive here, before the moon took all the water away but they've adapted quite well. Ever seen the video of a moray eel come out of the water or crawl around on land? With most thirsty, they've taken to "puddle jumping" ambushing from the murky ever shifting lakes to hold their territory and building simple stone forts around lakes that last the longest. During thunderstorms they march, happily. 

Their goal is comically evil. The Moon has sucked up enough water over the years to flood the Barrens twice over. They plan on boarding the Moon, maneuvering it over the lawful lands to the east, and dumping it all at once. They could probably do it if they could take care of the Eye Tyrant Zargon, who lairs directly under the moon. 

There is No Social Combat; or Arming your Players with the Swords and Shields of Social Convention

My fantasy heart-breaker continues to take shape and this a hubristic post to discuss one of my favorite things to come out of it so far.

Many moons ago I was listening to WebDM's podcast, a wonderful thing I am too behind to catch up on now, and Jim mentioned his irritation with homebrew systems that attempt to solve the lack of social pillar rules in D&D 5e by making them akin to combat.

Many online homebrews attempt to map the elements of conversation and other social interactions of D&D onto a combat procedure. Whether this is in an attempt achieve either the satisfying granularity and assured outcome of a sword fight or the abstraction of it, it simply doesn’t work. Conversations do not work like fights, and words are not points of damage that wear down an enemy's conversational resolve. While perhaps a case could be made that simply badgering an NPC incessantly with alternating persuasions, taunts and insults may wear them down enough to change their opinion to discount their great axe, this does not extend meaningfully into areas of diplomacy, politics and normal conversations.

So too does "what do you say" and a roll of charisma dice often feel shallow, lacking mechanical oomph, or inaccessible to players who are more adverse to roleplay or have lower stats. An oaf should still be able to navigate social situations with some grace; that's why he's an oaf in the first place.

Instead, you need to arm your players with what they need to engage with social interactions. I call them the Unspoken Rules. They originally started as writing NPCs and cultural touchstones based on this and this to generate or apply them on the fly, respectively. I wanted there to be a set of touchstones about my fantasy world that people could utilize, morays and folkways and the like, to emulate stuff like Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files where so much of the world is based on ancient pacts, laws and fairy nonsense. I do so love faerie nonsense. My players never pay so close attention to our games as when there's a powerful Fae about. So here are the ones I use in my games. Some are historical and some are not but hopefully they'll enrich your games. As a rule of thumb they are hard rules, something everyone in the world obeys without question, usually out of fear of retribution from the hidden wandering gods, like cannibalism and the Greek myth of Tantalus and his nephew Pelops.

Xenia: Hospitality and Guest-Host Rite

An intractable law of hospitality, Xenia states you must always welcome a traveler into your home as a guest, feed them and even wash their feet before you ask them any questions. To do otherwise, even asking a name, is an affront to the gods.

Most intelligent immortal monsters almost religiously subscribe to this rule. When a vampire, dragon or fey creature refers to you as a guest, rest assured they will play exactly by the rules. Cunning monster can and will use this against you. As a guest and host you must abide by certain rules. A guest must act with respect and accord in the home of their host, even to the point of defending them if they are attacked. A guest would not offer harm nor spy on their host and would aid them and other guests. A host too, would not visit harm upon a guest and aid them in whatever manner they reasonably could.

Bastards may invoke it to sleep indoors rather than outside. Bastards also abuse it to get free food. It’s one of the reasons they’re despised so much.

Sanctuary

Anyone, including bastards and outlaws, may invoke Sanctuary at a temple, shrine or place of worship. They cannot be apprehended for crimes committed as long as they remain on church grounds. However, each week, beginning on the first day that they stay there, the outlaws must make a Save vs Guilt or acquire one stone of guilt as the priests persuade them to turn themselves in or convert.

Somewhat related, priests are to remain unharmed, especially on holy ground and holy days except from other priests. Bastard priests often use this to evade harm or to attack priests whose gold they want.

Draco Horribilis

As a bastard, in defense of town, castle or kingdom against a vile monster, especially dragons, you may invoke Draco Horribilis to request anything reasonable from the town to defeat the beast, besides boots, beer and usually some local thing that rhymes with beer. The custom is ancient but not immune to etymological change.

This is no custom on giving any of those things back...

1d8 things that rhyme with “Beer”
Deer – the meat is holy or some such
Shear – no cutting implements may be given
Ear – they lend no listening ears to your worldly troubles and you cannot lose Terror by the usual method of confession or talking to the bartender
Here – you may not request the use of the land even for rest until the quest is done
Spear – no spears are to be loaned but this may to other weapons based on ancient custom
Rear – too many bastards ahem, requested another type of booty. Fair maidens are not to be used as monster bait.
Steer – no male livestock but may refer to all domesticated animals
Chandelier – a complicated story to be sure but usually refers to heirlooms or especially valuable décor. The king's crown, while certainly sure to attract many monsters, is not permitted.

The Oath and the Bargain

To swear an oath, especially on the Great River or on one’s power is a type of ancient sacred magic. Oaths taken, even by horrid villains, can be expected to be kept and followed to the letter.

To swear on the Great River and break your oath, quarters your health. Break it thrice and die.

To swear on one’s power and break an oath is terribly detrimental to those with powers like wizards. For every oath broken on your power, lose 1 Magic Dice.

Bargains are like oaths, and amongst the powerful, mortal or otherwise, as valuable as currency. Bargains must be fulfilled but a debt or favor owed, may be passed around as currency. For example, if a king owes you a debt, you may give that debt to another who may then ask the king for the favor. The king cannot trade the favor away because he is the one who owes.

The Rule of Rats and Eyes

All outlaws can inherently recognize one another if they look each other in the eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul and the soul of a bastard is a child in armor, a bird whose momma never came back to roost and old before anything with eyes ought to be. When a bastard sees these eyes in another, one of two things happens: immutable bonds or nasty deaths.

As a rule, the player characters must like or certainly tolerate one another. The Rule of Rats is this: it is better to be many rats than one, at least until the grain’s gone dry. Without each other, you'll all be dead by winter.

The Rule of Rats can be further extended. You can tell a lot about a person by looking in their eyes; stare longer than is comfortable and roll under Wisdom. On a success, learn something about a person, an Itch, a Hunger, whether they’re a coward or a killer. It's not a lie detector and it can’t tell you facts, just truths. It's a feelin’ in your gut, like the one that got you alive this far. It tells you who this person is, what they might be willing to do and possibly what they are. This is the Rule of Eyes. You cannot force it, both parties must be consenting. 

• It's why a shape shifter will never look you in the eyes and why a vampire always does. One wants you to know exactly what it is and what you are and the other wants to make sure you never do.
• Never look a Magician in the eye. They can see right into your soul and worse, you’ll look into his. If you do, you each gain +1 Terror that never goes away and they couldn’t know each other better if they shared flesh.
• Never look a medusa in the eye. What lies there is pain and suffering enough mortals let the magic turn them cold and grey

Conclusion

Let player use these rules to their advantage. Xenia is a great way to get into a party or ball without an invite. An arrogant prince would be remiss to turn down "How kindly I have heard you are and how rich you will look to your guests feeding us. Oh are names? Food first, we're certainly no outlaws from the next town over on the run..."

Its even more fun with monsters. Afraid to break out that HD 19 Storm Giant Lord? The player's may invoke Xenia and now they're on equal footing, both clever enough to know how to play one against the other. This is basically like the entirety of the Odyssey and what makes Odysseus so cool.

These rules give player's wiggle room in deadly worlds. They can contend with faeries and vampires and deal with failure by hiding in churches while they regroup. And when a villain breaks these rules, it makes them all the more compelling. An assassin who betray the Rule of Rats at the penultimate moment to frame the players and escape? Guaranteed to make them memorable. A terrible demon that says "actually I do not recognize Xenia prepare to die" is compelling, even more so if the players know in advance.

All of these "social conventions" can create interesting situations that don't revolve around combat. Losing your disguise because the wizard insists on looking everyone in the eyes adds an interesting kink to the ballroom crash.

Go ahead, write your own social conventions! Give your players the tools they need to annoy your NPCs!

Fools and Magic

In the style of this and this.

There is in the world, magic. A force so mighty and potent it bears down on light and heat and the great sepulchral gloaming, pushing it back, piercing it and fracturing into the myriad colors of birds and sunsets, of bees and battlegrounds. It is kismet. Called satori. An epiphany. The moment when the dreary fog of your day to day is lifted to see something monumental. It is why the sun rises and sets and more importantly why you are compelled to look when it does. The tides and wind and storms and all the things that glimmer so enchanting that cry out for you to behold them, that is where this power goes. In love at first sight, in lightning strikes, in well placed curves and lipstick. Power they call it, like calling the splitting of the atom power. A great assortment of bastards have truck with it.  Fools, a whole foolish lot of fools, who call themselves wise strangle it. Fighters claim they ignore it, like oily water off their foul backs and yet their Violence is the Arts, poetry written in blood. 

It is spectacular because it is spectacle. 

It is fantastic because it is fantasy. 

It is magical for it is magic. 

The Fool

A pied shirt and belled-hat for these types who instead swaddle themselves in robes and other such accoutrements d'inutile. They call themselves the Wise and seek a storied sunset with a closed eye; the heart is the optic nerve by which the fantastic can be seen which they do not use. Instead, their third eye, corrupting for it is the mind's eye, is how they seek magic and thereby how it is twisted. The poet seeks magic and writes in a flophouse sweat, hands greasy and malcontent from the snapping jaws of his typewriter. The fool ignores such perceived drivel for tomes of vile use and abuse. If they could peel back their flesh and sweating hold their ribs apart, under desperate panting they'd hear their own heart would cry out breathlessly -youdonotgetit-

Starting Equipment. Ugly musty robes, once clean, you have pilfered for the look of it. A heavy bandage worn across the chest. It muffles incessant ticking in the chest -youdonotge- and a great tome, heavy with oily Power. 

Templates

A) A Great Bastard, A Spell or Two, Power +1
B) Third Eye, Power +1
C) Subservient is the World, Power +1
D) Transmogrification, Apprentice, Power +1

A Great Bastard

The world was unkind to you and its dark reflection shines in your black eyes. You may employ the following kens with ease: dirty tricks, backstabs, lies, stealth and begging. When you are Desperate, roll checks twice and like a great hooting ape take the lower value. You may always sacrifice that which keeps you sane, pacified or medicated to instead simply succeed. 

A Spell or Two

You've done it you mean and miserly Pagliacci. For when wit was enough, you went without wit and grace, for charm stolen from the sunsets and the flowers and first loves. You chanted for enchantment freely given and bled for words already written. You poor wretch you have taken the constellations from the heavens and smashed them like a vase and ignored the scream in your chest -youdono- for magic. You command it though you are not its master, like a rider upon a loyal stolen horse. You now know magic, know these spells but you do not understand them. Your third eye flutters sensing the Power, intoxicated. You can cast them but it is a mockery. You know not a warm embrace, recall only the echoes of a friend's laughter and languidly, like a fell vulture, you push such recollections aside to rip and tear the spell from its home. You don't relish the cold greasy tendons straining against your hands but neither do you think it wrong. This is the world, taught by the mind's eye. Their names are foreign to you. Select one or two from below to start and another when you steal it, win it in a duel or sacrifice something for it. 

Morning Embrace - set alight for d6 damage a target creature or flammable object you can see. The heat intensifies 1d6 for every combat round you keep your eyes on their burning form. It can be gained by sacrificing a friend. They never mattered. 

At First Sight - d6 damage to target creature +6 if wielding or clad in metal. If the target has known mature love, it jumps to another. It can be gained by sacrificing a love. Too little, far far too late. 

Lover's Guise - you assume the form of another whom you have seen or whose love you have seen. The guise is good by sight and sound, even to the gods but the touch and taste others will find repulsive. The gods are quick to punish oaths taken while as another. 

Sight, Far and Deep - with hair or nail or blood you spy upon another in a still pool, once per pool for it is stained and brackish thereafter. Desecrate a corpse to have a question answered though it usually produces a ghost. Can be gained by stealing from the crypt of a mentor. 

Enchant - a stranger becomes a sycophant. Costs 1 STR while ensorcelled. The more well known the target, the more it takes from you. 

Guiding Hand - your mind's eye wears a glove and you can manipulate objects you can see with the dexterity of your own hand. Use INT for STR of the hand. It can choke, throttle and throw as you would expect. It costs only the renunciation of meaningful embraces. 

Hide - shame is a powerful motivator. Predators like the orchid spider have none. Cloak yourself in it and be unseen, unheard or unfelt [1 dice per effect] for the duration. it can be found by sacrificing the very same and your ability to feel shame. A useful tool in pursuit of Power. 

Power

Rather than use your [dice] to cast a spell, you may instead simply use it to force your will on the world. For any physical task you attempt you may use Power and attempt with a -10 to the roll. A foes task is hindered, +10. The will is brutish, unrefined and inelegant. It can empower magic and mortals but it twists spell and breaks bone. The Power cannot thread needle, tend wounds nor carry glass. 

Third Eye

Manic now, the third eye opens, throbbing and bloodshot, darting, always open. It flows with tears, trying to find the source of a splinter that isn't there. If you concentrate, a painful thing, you can see a version of the world, one not meant for you. Some claim it's how the world really is, laid bare with cancerous growths and bone visible with skin shorn back. Others say it's just Heaven and Hell in a fractal dance around you, everywhere all at once all the time. Most just take another hit of what opened it in the first place and give in. 

While you use it you see though illusions, not just magical ones but notional ones too, for mercy and justice are pale forms before the absolute of Death.  You see the true forms of shapeshifters, though men hide their visages too and you can see through those as well. Things that are enchanted, cursed or radioactive are as apparent to you as the stained glass in a window and ground holy or unholy is hot to the touch of your shod irreverent feet. The gleeful macabre forms that possess men, demons, smile gleefully at you, astride their man vessels. They are Greed, Rape and violent mental illness. 

Observing them costs your STR. The first time you use it, your STR is halved. The second time, it is set to 1. The third time, if used without potent painkillers or other crutches of vice, kills you. If you draw a second vice, you may use the sight with only -1 STR penalty per use per day but sacrificing it would kill you. 

Subservient is the World 

Wicked goblins and dancing devils cavort in the pale moonlight. Raucous they hunger for the treasures of men, hunger to bargain and be made free to cast their wickedness wherever they go. You seek them, summon them and bind them to your will eternal. Magic may not be an oxen you can yet yoke, but these apparitions may yet bend to your heel. You read the bloody passages of the book, pages cracked and sticking from viscera they once contained. Diagrams of suffering poured over, sacred geometry studied and eye watering coin spent to acquire the Satanic tools. Naked you howl at the moon lit by fire, covered in the blood of the trusting now burning on the pyre. The black goat bleats savagely, alerting the arrival of the shades who lap the blood and wine, libations one and the same. From the woods will pour the goblins and wicked folk, banshees and redcaps. You will dance and dine with them and about you will swirl Power like so much bloody rain. This is the Summoning Dance, a mockery of the word and the magic. 

You may use an instance of your Power to bind, torture or banish a shade or devil, hag or goblin. If bound, they are your unwilling attendant. It will hate you, plan your downfall, curse your progeny and most of all obey. Strike them and strike them often lest they leave razors in your bread or pox blankets in your chambers to acquire the blood they need for their freedom. Always your mind's eye will be upon them, burning them, and they will sit on your chest while you sleep in hopes you suffocate. 

Transmogrification

This flesh, yes, this very flesh, I should have known -youdon- SHUT UP. SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP. Its all mercurial, the eye they eye was the hint I should have seen instead of watching yes yes. Too late. Too late for that. I must see, see with my mind's eye. The flesh is quicksilver. Magic is the flesh, its in the flesh!

You misunderstand. So close, so close and like always you cannot see. Blood, blood is all you know. You fail to see its most potent inside you and you smear it on your face in lieu of grease paint. The carnival is in town and you're the show. you've found magic is in the flesh. the blood. The heart even. And you force it because the book, the damn book is a hammer and your corrupting mind's eye can only see nails.  And you see yourself as a template of you own choosing. Form is function and like God's clay you can be shaped and you breathe life into yourself.  

You learn the powers of transmogrification. It is sickening. Bones reknit themselves, hair tearing through skin and bleeding so much bleeding the first time, like a virgin again. The Change is an Art and you are a child who can barely grasp the brush, but you will learn oh will you learn and pain and Power your teacher ever present. You may assume the visage of a loping wolf, thieving raven or whatever form pleases you. Be honest, they were inside you all along, clawing and pecking their way out. Balefully you may also subject others to this curse. Test Charisma after a day to revert to your true form, whatever that means to you or remain trapped a year and a day in that form. The urges of each form never go away either. Draw two cards, any combination of Hunger or Vice.

Apprentice

Love you have thrown out, comradery a sound in your ear. And yet craven need for kinships not even you can shake off. Magic's last hope for the fool, to be saved, to be understood, to be held again. You take on a partner, whom you have power over. Your needs of the other are intimate, intwined and adversarial. They desire your knowledge and Power, their reasons their own. You need their humanity, their vitality. Sex, pain and madness are the colors that paint the dark tapestry before it frays and you are redeemed, part ways or tear each other asunder. 

Mistress. there is magic in her pale beauty and she plans to kill you with a knife. A pretty face can get you out of almost any trouble, if you promise fame. Killing her grants a powerful charm. But your heart leaps into your throat at the thought and beats in time with her own. 

Student. hungrier than even you and with more talent. plans to make it look like an accident. A useful scapegoat when they come looking. Killing him provides a new spell, peeled like a hangnail from his own oily book. And yet you notice his magic is like a caress, and you feel a longing in your heart when he casts. 

Lackey. running from something, something you shield him from and dirty and dirtier work you have for him. He'll break your neck with his meaty bare hands for your Power.  Killing him grants a powerful favor from an enemy. But his drink his strong and dark and he shares it unthinkingly. it loosens your tongue and your bandages. You listen to your heart while you drink. 

Gravedigger. a miscreant, physically or in the legal sense, and they will hit you in the back of the head with a stone when they think they can get away with it and bury you themselves. They hide all your worst misdeeds and never judge your desires, as long as the drugs flow. Killing them produces and oracular skull for speaking with spirits. Mercy they elicit from you, when, convulsing as the drugs wear off, you wipe the sweat from their brow. 

Nurse. Sweet, brave, desperate. An injection in the neck while you sleep is the most painless way she can think to do it. Sews you up when things go awry, almost back to perfect. Why does she frown listening at the stethoscope?  Killing her would grant a talisman against fell magic. but she whispers, you already have one, don't you? 

Bookbinder. obsessive and keen-eyed, willing to overlook anything you might do, shy of hurting a book. For access to your library she can successfully defend you from investigation and hide your practice from prying eyes. She coddles them like babies, lovingly tending to their cracks and tears and bindings. Its never too late to save one she always says, there's magic in them, not always refereeing to the same ones as you. Killing her would bind a powerful guardian to place of your choosing. but you think, she'd forgive you for your cracks. 

No Mythic Underworld: Dungeons as Psychological Spaces

 Inspired by the ever-relevant Philotomy's Musings 

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche

I've been working for over a year now on my own fantasy heartbreaker TTRPG. Your condolences are much appreciated. It's been a great way to interrogate what I love about various editions of D&D and more importantly, what makes my friends groan when I begin to rant about them. Team initiative is in, tracking ammo is fun but needs abstracted and acquiring wealth and treasure beyond your wildest imaginings is the truest spirit of the game. 

But today, after a short few days to recharge, it led me to look at dungeons as characters. This is nothing new or substantive, there have always been themed dungeons, full of character. But this heartbreaker will (hopefully) sell them as not merely full of, but actually as characters. 

The central theme of this heartbreaker is that you're playing jerks with hearts of gold. Knaves, buffoons, thugs, brutes and most importantly bastards. People who are the result of abandonment, misuse and abuse, trying in their own way to make it in the medieval world. In many ways, the typical dungeon has experienced the exact same thing. How many dungeons take place in desecrated temples, defiled crypts and forgotten homes. They are left to crumble, decay and are taken over by typically awful, evil or similarly misbegotten creatures. If you believe a house can be alive, that a place can have a spirit, why cannot it too be traumatized. 

Philotomy's Musings surmised that the many odd rules of early dungeon exploration were due to it being part of a mythic underworld, one where laws of reality are twisted, inverted or otherwise different. Doors that close on their own, barring PC passage but allowing easy monster egress. Monsters losing their ability to see in the dark when they ally with the players is a funny referee adjudication with even more fascinating implication. 

Patrick Stuart's Veins of the Earth describes The Rapture, a malevolent force that's part of the caves deep below the earth as much as its a part of the overworlder psyche and biology. One that that twists up the people it attacks in darkness. 

Inspired by these ideas I propose that dungeons are psychological spaces as much as they are mythic and physical spaces. 

One of the elements of the heartbreaker are what I call retroactive backstories. To speed up character creation, you're encouraged to create a character on the fly without a substantial backstory. As the game progresses certain (usually violent) triggers will ask you roll on a memory table that informs your backstory. The first time you drop to 0 HP reminds your character about a tragic event from childhood or adulthood as an example of trigger and result. I think dungeons could fill a similar purpose, presenting psychological elements from the character as twisted truths for them to respond to. And of course, to attack or run away from. Like something out of Stephen King's The Shining, the dungeon knows your thoughts and fears or comes to know them as you adventure within and weaponizes them against you. 

For example, as part of a wandering monster table, remove some of the results and replace them with "Psychological Enemy". Whether randomly or otherwise, determine who the dungeon is preying on. Perhaps it uses a potent phobia of the PC, spiders made giant or corpses now animate. Maybe instead the ghost of a PC's parent forcing them to live a horrid memory before attacking the party or disappearing. Feelings related to the dungeon's abandonment and anger could be felt as physical forces in rooms: potent starvation, fatigue, withdrawal or infighting. Whatever relates to the dungeon's history. Traps too could be manifestations of the dungeons twisted psyche; malevolent pit traps designed to cause suffering or doors that fly open to reveal monsters. In essence the dungeon is haunted. 

Two potential flavors (I won't say issues) are fixed here. First, if you're worried about naturalism (how the hell did this dragon get down here and where does it shit) worry not. It's a manifestation of the party's greed, of all the greed that led to the downfall of the temple, that caused it to be here, waiting. Perhaps the monsters aren't real at all, and the dungeon pulls them from stories in our head. 

Second, traps resetting could be dungeon spirits, manifestations of the dungeon preparing them again or else simply the dungeon doing it itself. It's not a real space, it's a mythic one. A reflection of twisted psyches. An entity as greedy as you that hoards its treasures and resents you taking them away. 

Joseph Campbell in his Hero with a Thousand Faces cites the Abyss or Atonement with the Father as one of the integral steps within the Hero's Journey. The hero enters into the worst part of their journey, where they must transcend their previous life in the face of their greatest adversity. 

    "The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. They behold the face of the father, understand — and the two are atoned."

Pop culturally recall Luke Skywalker heading into the cave on Dagobah to fight dream Darth Vader and reveal horrible truths to him. That is the essence of what I'm talking about. 

For your trouble, some tables to roll upon

The Trauma/Memory Table

The heartbreaker uses an Odd-like HP/STR system. The d20 you roll to stay conscious at 0 HP correlates to the tables below. With a success, you gain a Trauma, an awful physical or mental wound among other things. On a failure gain a harsh Memory or mental disposition. I'll balance it better later for varying Constitutions. 

Trauma

20. Yikes, that hit actually killed you.
19-15. Dismembered. The limb struck (determined by 1d6) is severed. If head, lose eyes, ears or nose.
14-10. Mortal Wound. Limb is savaged.
9-7. Grievous Wound. Limb is crippled. 

6-5. Pain. Your HP will always be one shy of full.
4. Phobia. You fear the foes or its type (spiders, giants, magicians with weird mustaches)
3. Vengeance. Gain +1 damage/defense against foe or its type (spiders, giants, goblins with funny voices)
2. Grudge. Gain +2 defense against foe or its type (spiders, giants, insurance salesmen). +1d6 HP if you resolve to never use the weapon or armor worn by the foe.
1. Perspective. Your life flashes before your eyes. Gain a new perspective, a personal rule about the world. 

Memory

 Fill out your own table appropriate bad memories and put them here. Here are some vague, evocative ones from my table. Just subtract 10 from the d20 roll if you get over 10 to have one less roll.

1. Bruises. Just empty words. Scars. Now those are promises.  
2. "So much potential and yet still you fail." 
3. "I raised you better than this." But you didn't.  
4. "Dinner was nicer when you worked through it." 
5. "The things you think they say about you are true." 
6. Through tears I heard "Such a DISAPPOINTMENT" 
7. "Try this. It will make you feel better." It did.  
8. "Worthless."  
9. "If you loved me…" The rest was a blur because I did.  
10. I didn’t mean to do it. To hit them so hard. To run. It just happened.  

Here is 1d6 random encounter table for your dungeon to abuse your players with. Tweak it to match the energy of the dungeon. You could also take an existing Wandering Monster Table and replace results you don't like with some of these. 

1	Encounter, Denizen of Dungeon
2	Encounter, Phobia pulled from the bastard’s mind
3	Encounter, Trauma. Player rolls on the memory table. Dungeon twists it if necessary.
4	Encounter, Ghost. A simulacra of someone who died in Dungeon
5	Ennui, a great cloying feeling gnaws at the interlopers
6	Encounter, a monster of yore pulled from the bastards’ minds