Remarks: In a Wicked Age

This is a game that don’t get to run often enough. Without a doubt, it is one of my favorite roleplaying games. It’s also one of the most unusual, as it abandons many of the traditions and structures that arguably define tabletop roleplaying games and focuses on storytelling and worldbuilding.

Rather than the gamemaster create a setting and the players create character, the entire group assembles story elements, from which they draw out character and setting elements. It sounds strange, but it works. The genre is sword and sorcery, so you have some preconceived notions and the elements are geared toard that. The elements are determined by four “oracles”, each of which represents a type of story: “Blood & Sex”, “God-Kings of War”, “The Unquiet Past”, “A Nest of Vipers”. You pick one, and draw ordinary playing cards. The cards then offer up a phrase that suggests certain things.

For example, I’ll pick “A Nest of Vipers” and draw four cards: I picked the 4 of Spades, 2 of Hearts, 9 of Hearts, 7 of Spades. Consulting the “Nest of Vipers” oracle, I get the following:

• 4 of Spades – one mistakenly condemned, fled into hiding
• 2 of Hearts – a conjurer who needs blood to entice his uncouth spirits
• 9 of Hearts – a young widower, raging, whose beautiful wife was murdered by a sorcerer by a romantic rival
• 7 of Spades – a fur trapper, simple but good natured, and his daughter

From here, we put together a list of characters, both clearly stated and implied. We have someone mistakenly condemned, but that can also be combined with another character, perhaps the sorcerer or the romantic rival. We have the conjurer, and the uncouth spirits (yes, you can play them as characters!). The young widower, the beautiful wife (as a ghost, or in flashback)… you get the idea. Players pick a character from here, give them names, and write them up. The gamemaster takes the other characters, and works out the story.

The mechanics are atypical as well. You don’t write up the character’s abilities, not directly. You assign dice to their motivations, of “forms”, a polyhedral up to a d12. These are Covertly, Directly, For Myself, For Others, With Love, and With Violence. You don’t just roll your combat skill; what you do matters as much as how you do it, and why. You pick two forms, say, Directly, and With Violence. The action has to fit those. If you have a d6 in Directly and a d8 in With Violence, you roll those dice. You also get a Particular Strength, some talent you’re particularly good at. Again, some are called out and obvious; the fur trapper might have “fur trapping”, the sorcerey “sorcery”.  The others the player can make up, or leave it blank until some point in the story where it becomes relevant or the need for a previously unrevealed talent become obvious.

Play is a little hard to grasp at first. Two players, or the player and gamemaster, roll against each other. The player with the highest die, it doesn’t matter which, goes first. You roll a d6 and d10, and get a 4 and 8. I roll a d4 and d12, and get a 3 and a 2. You got the 8, you go first and describe what your character does and what happens in the scene. Your roll stands. I re-roll, and based on how well I re-roll, things either go exactly as you describe or I get to make some alterations to the scene. It’s more storytelling than direct combat.

There are rules for creating chapters in the story, and tying the elements together. It’s the gamemaster’s job to tie the elements together into a lot, and to set up the scenes. Players can end up taking more than one character, as a character is killed or their role in the story is simply fulfilled. THey come on stage, do their part to move the plot forward, and exit.

Fans of the game have created more oracles, so you can expand a sword and sorcery game beyond the four oracles in the game. They’ve also create oracles for other genres; the first time I played this game, it was an urban crime setting a la The Shield or The Wire. It works very well, especially if you can think in terms of the players being an ensemble cast in a TV show or movie rather than a traditional adventuring party. Characters can be working a cross-purposes, good guys and bad guys all getting their moment.

If you’re looking for something different, give it a try. The PDF is only $10 and 36 pages, and there’s a tom of online support available.

Purchase In a Wicked Age directly from Lumpley Games