Coriolis Mythic Fate Tables: Ask the Icons...

This post is full of a lot of unsubstantiated 'reckon'ing.  I don't own Coriolis yet.  In case speculating on rules I might like to fiddle with will annoy anyone, best read no further.

I've been falling in love with Coriolis from a distance...  

It's been from a distance for two reasons.  Firstly I've just started a new campaign for both of the groups that I run games for.  Both of these games are in Medieval Fantasyland, and they're both using my rules mashup of Knave 2e and Frostgrave.  This is what both groups have asked for and at the moment at least everyone seems to be having a good time.  Secondly I'm skint from Christmas spending and need to horde some money to buy Coriolis and MYZ to realise my evil plans.  

Since my Frostknave games started I immediately began looking for a Science Fiction system I could languish in for a while.  I tend to do some solo RPing to build out worlds that I later use at the table.  This means I get to have fun with the prep as I go and makes it feel less like homework for me.  I got copies of of Mongoose Traveller 2e, Scum and Villainy, started rereading Starforged and Stars Without Number.  These are all great games with a wealth of usable stuff, but none were quite what I wanted.  I wanted something that was totally different from F20 games, in terms of mechanic resolution.  But I wanted those rules to be very simple to pick up and to teach.  My favourite Science Fiction games that I read were actually 2400 series by Jason Tocci.  They are so evocative and so simple.  If I was running a game purely for myself I think I would run those but I have some players that love a good book to explore and stats to track.  The idea of combining step dice with some sort of attribute dice was rattling around in my head.  At first I thought "am I accidentally redesigning Savage Worlds, but poorly?"  From there I found Blade Runner RPG.  I downloaded the Year Zero SRD and started rereading Vaesen and Forbidden Lands.  I had bounced off of them as fantasy systems, in spite of loving the mechanics and worlds.  I was happy with what I had for my fantasy system and mostly just sat around staring lovingly at the art work and worlds from the Fria Ligan books that I had.  I got Johan Egerkrans' Dragon artbook for Christmas and it's gorgeous.

So I went poking around Fria Ligan's site again and really liked the look of Coriolis.  I don't have money for the book at the moment so I found a podcast;  The Coriolis Effekt (now just Effekt) is an amazing source of Coriolis flavoured goodness.  I went all the way back to the start.  It helps when doing this to be somone who has a bunch of podcast listening time.  I run about 10 hours a week and that's when my listening and thinking happens. 

 GM fiat points

My one hang up in everything I've listened to on Coriolis is the Darkness Point mechanic.  In Coriolis, when you push a roll the GM gets a Darkness Point.  The GM can then use this metacurrency to create complications in the narrative for the players, or to power certain enemies abilities.  Pushing your roll in Coriolis is referred to as "Praying to the Icons".  The idea is very flavourful but the mechanic reads as flat to me.  The darkness points seem like GM fiat points.  They don't create tension and there's no gamble aspect, because you have no idea what a GM may spend a darkness point on.  Once they spend the point, it happens.  Indeed this came up in a later episode of the Effekt podcast where Matthew decided to run DP rules as written and keep spending Darkness points in an effort to burn through his stack.  But purchasing complications in the form of reinforcements for the antagonists just lead to more DP being spent by the players to try to get out of the situation, which led to more reinforcements...  Pushing mechanics are intergral to Year Zero engine games. The pushing mechanic in Forbidden Lands is one of my favourite mechanics in that game.  If you choose to push a roll any 1s rolled in your dice pool may damage gear or attributes depending on the colour of the dice.  This makes the pushed roll a gamble, but an understandable one.  Initially I thought of grafting Forbidden Lands or Mutant Year Zero push rules directly onto the Coriolis chassis.  My problem with this idea is that I do like the flavour of the "Praying to the Icons", I'm just not a fan of the execution.

Mythic Fate Table and Chaos Points

This is where my previous solo and duet gaming experience came in handy.  When I think of praying and probability my mind went to the Mythic Fate table.  I have used Mythic more in my duet game with a friend who lives in a different hemipshere than I do in solo gaming, but it's very fun for adding a random element.  When I don't have a strong opinion on something I'm asked by the player, or just something that happens at the table, I will ask the oracle a question about the world. Mythic uses word based probabilities to define how likely something is (likely, 50/50, unlikely, Very unlikely, impossible, etc).  A 'chaos factor' may then be added as an additional probability tweak to the results.  You roll on the table with percentile dice and get a reult of "extreme yes, yes, no, extreme no."  My favourite way to use this tool is to say to my player "I'm not sure, lets find out... I think it's nearly certain", then I will tell the player what the threshold for the result they want is, eg. "roll over an 85".  This way the roll has tension.  In the case I'm thinking of it was whether a hungry wolf whose goblin masters had just been killed in a battle was agressive.  The player rolled a 98: extreme no.  Which meant the wolf was curious about him, nearly friendly.

I would never make this call at the table.  The dice decided.  Playing to see what happens is what keeps me playing RPGs, so I was hooked on Mythic as a play aid.

Ok, but Coriolis?

Well I think the darkness points would benefit from the uncertainty generated by the Mythic fate tables.  Especially when rolled in the open.  When you Pray to the Icons, you are asking something to intercede on your behalf and bend the laws of probability.  The Darkness points are meant to reflect some sort of karmic retribution, but for me they lack the random emergent element that makes for enjoyable gameplay loop at the table.  What if, when the GM has an idea for spending a darkness point they describe the possible outcome, then Ask the Icons (oracle) what happens?  So in the example of being in a firefight, the GM asks "do the antagonists get reinforcements?"  The GM sets the odds, if unsure pick 50/50.  This determination is based on overall understanding of the game world and fiction.  The GM may then spend Darkness points to increase the chaos factor, thereby inccreasing the odds of a yes result.  For this to work the question should be phrased such that the negative result for the players is the "yes" answer.

If the question started out as 50/50 odds of happening, then spending three darkness points would shift that probability to an 85% chance of reinforcements.  This should be done at the table with pageantry.  Fate table visible to players; ask the question; spend the darkness points; move the marker and tell the players the odds; have somebody roll.  If your players do all of this and get a no on an 85% chance they will be ecstatic.  If they get an "extreme no", perhaps local law enforcement turns up and sides with the players.  Bear in mind that in this case there is only a 2% chance of an extreme no, but in  my experience of using Mythic at the table, that makes it all the more memorable.

I like the "mouthfeel" of this mechanic.  It ties into the probabilistic gambling we all know and love in TTRPGs.  More importantly I think it ties into the flavour of the Icons from what I have heard of them.  The Icons may be every bit as capricious as the Greek gods and are not well understood.  Nobody quite know why they do what they do.  I like the notion that the table can feel the reality warping effects of earlier prayer.  It puts me in mind of reading Wheel of Time as a teenager and Mat Cauthon's bloody dice tumbling in his head.  It also has the added benefit of using more darkness points for something that may or may not go in the player favour.  Also as a GM, its super fun to set those parameters and roll to see what happens.

So I say, down with fiat... but to keep it interesting Ask the Icons what happens next.  Maybe they love your players, but maybe the Dark Between the Stars will have its say...

I mostly wrote this post because I won't be playing Coriolis any time soon, and I thought I might as well document my idea.  I published it because maybe a Coriolis GM would have fun with it, or could point out the blindingly obvious flaw in my idea.