'Ask Ryan about In A Wicked Age !

[Ry]

I've wondered before about how to make the best Oracle. I mostly navigate it by feel. But there's some very good advice in this thread on the Story Games forum.

Best way to test an Oracle: Imagine your group and draw an oracle, imagine what they'd say. If you know how to basically navigate the Best Interest phase and the output is a knot that looks interesting to you, then you're all set.

My Oracle is in pieces ... literally. I printed off new ideas as I had them and mixed them in, culled ones that didn't work for me. That Oracle is in the basement somewhere because for the last eight sessions I've used the original oracles.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Can you give me a little bit more of a breakdown of the Oracles? I mean Blood & Sex and the others are self-descriptive, but I would like to see in more detail what each of them mean.

 

[LostSoul]

Am I just that awesome?

Yes. (This is Dave L by the way - maybe "indie Dave"? So many Daves...)

What's the worst thing about the game, in your opinion?

(By the way, what's your gaming schedule like these days? Erik and I are going to playtest a 4E sandbox hack that I've been working on and we need another two players for it... I'll probably make a post on TAG when I feel like things are ready.)

 

[Ry]

Hey Dave! You need no reintroduction. I have some free slots in my schedule.

Worst part of In A Wicked Age? Well, the flake factor is pretty important. If you're there for the game and the rest of your friends all think 'oh, it'll be fine if I miss tonight's session because IAWA isn't like other games!' then you can be left feeling crappy when only 1 player shows up.

Other things to watch for (not negatives, just observations):
I find that sometimes we get so focused on our characters that the set / backdrop / stage can easily fall out of people's description. That's easily mitigated if you have maps or pictured of some places, like a generic throne room, town square, cliffside, temple, and tavern.

The dice mechanic doesn't translate easily to online tabletops. That's a pain because I enjoy running it with small groups online but find the dice do get a bit awkward. Maybe someone more clever than I will find a way, however.

Finally the action resolution system has no name in the text. Vincent calls it 'action sequence' on forums but it's just called 'playing with dice' in the text. People confuse it with a stake-setting conflict resolution system. I'd rather refer to it as a 'coercion' system than a 'conflict resolution' system.

 

[Ry]

Blood & Sex is about human relationships under pressure (often from other human relationships, sometimes by the supernatural)

God-kings of War is about war, the people who want it and the people and things caught up in it.

The Unquiet Past is about the supernatural but it's also about time, which works in cool ways to connect chapters - a poisoned priestess in the past shows up as a dangerous ghost in the present, for example.

Nest of Vipers is about intrigue, both the intrigue of courts and of towns and villages. Often the 'default' oracle when I introduce new players.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

And your "All too Human"?

Sorry, if it looks like I'm asking dumb questions, I know how you feel. In the early days of d20 when I made my web conversions I had a lot of people e-mail me questions (and a few people wanting me to scan and send them free stuff from my gaming library).

 

[Ry]

So I have these 4 themes for my IAWA games; Intrigue, Time, War, and Wonder.

Based purely on my own preferences, I fished out the elements that I thought matched those, and I printed them off and stuck them in shiny Magic Card protectors (slipping a playing card in the back).

So I had 4 decks:
Purple - Intrigue
Blue - Time
Red - War
Gold - Wonder

So for example the War oracle is all obviously War-themed, soldiers, fleets headed for unsuspecting coastlines, and so on.

Everything left over from all 4 Oracles ('regular' stuff plus most of the Blood and Sex oracle) went into the All Too Human Oracle, which has black card backs (which I have a gajillion of).

So when a player chooses an Oracle they go "I'll draw two Time and two All Too Human" and we go.