The Bloody Hands part 0: Campaign Background and Thoughts

The idea cooking in my head was simple: could I start a solo game that I could play fairly simply on my phone in small bursts (a few actions at a time) or slightly longer if I had time?

Chewing over the idea of what that might look like, some ideas settled into mind:

• A game that can be played using simple mobile tools such as a dice roller and draw-a-card app.
• Journaling and note-keeping kept simply enough that Google Keep (or a similar notes app) would suffice.
• A game where I might be able to make a few moves before bed, waiting at the doctor's office, or on a lunch break without a lot of build up or take down.

There is a bit of irony that this idea initially grew out of the concept of playing a solo game entirely inside the Mythic GM Emulator App but as I chewed on the idea more I thought it might be fun to use Tricube Tales and I settled on Tricube Solo for the general engine (but not exactly the oracle, as I will discuss). This meant the Mythic app that started it was out, for now, but I had some nice forward momentum. 

The (possibly short) Campaign

I picked, nearly at random, The Guardians of the Shadow Frontier as my scenario since I was down for playing most anything.

image credit: 

written by Richard Woolcock with art by Balázs Pirók, Ede László, and taken from the WWN Art Pack. CC-BY-3.0. 

The scenario set-up is pretty simple: Decades ago, a war of succession shattered the once prosperous kingdom of Khelia. As the violence escalated, the rival factions drew upon increasingly dark and dangerous magic, unleashing terrible monsters upon the land. In the end, the would-be successors lay dead, their prize reduced to ruin. With their lords gone, the surviving mages united under one banner, rebuilding the former kingdom as a magocracy. The newly formed Arcane Order drove out the monsters and conjured a protective veil around the realm. Dark magic was outlawed, and a military force called the “guardians” was established to protect the people from any monsters that managed to cross the veil. You are guardians, elite soldiers trained by the Arcane Order. The mages have tattooed your skin with magical sigils, transforming you into a living weapon, and you have sworn an oath to defend the realm.

That sounds plenty fun to me and that sort of set-up - a magical barrier that protects from an outside chaos - is something I have used in various campaigns (solo or otherwise) before, so I figured I could try a slightly unique flavor of it.

Doug's Additional Concepts

I had an odd visual almost immediately in mind. The Arcane Order started out in a research university town - Hub - and developed Resonance Towers. The physical appearance of this Resonance is like giant soap bubbles spreading over the land, the sky a shimmering haze of rainbow colors in the protected regions. 

image credit: rihaij via pixabay (link)

As Resonance builds, the bubbles generated by the land grow larger and larger, eventually merging together. It is a self-feeding system that grows and strengthens on its own but can be fragile if directly assaulted by agents of The Dark. Some towers have already been destroyed and some areas lost. 

Though Hub is not the largest city in the Arcane Order's domain (Khalid City being the capital), it still prides itself as the academic and research basis behind Resonant Engineering. Hub would be the focus on the campaign as the Order continues to build Towers and spread Resonance further and further. 

Inside the Bubbles, the ability to rebuild technology and advance society resumes so society is now at a roughly early Victorian level. Outside, The Dark creates chaos and breaks down order, causing those places unprotected to be more like a traditional fantasy setting. This adds a layer where some Insiders considers themselves superior to the people still struggling hard against The Dark Outside. 

Near Hub, a new threat has arisen. Several sites of attacks have been marked by a pair of bloody hand prints as a calling card. Dubbed "The Bloody Hands," this unknown agency seeks to disrupt the spread of Resonance. The focus characters, Guardians from Hub, are tasked with tracking down The Bloody Hands before any more damage can be done. 

The Characters and Vibe

There are three characters (note: names were basically made out of random syllables squished together):

• Arden Ulet: A Crafty Seer. Brilliant but Brooding Tactician. --> Arden is the main focus of the campaign. He is looking to move up in the Guardians and be recognized for his brilliance, but his sour disposition and pushing back of protocol keeps holding him back. He is essentially directly inspired by a young Endeavour Morse. Hub, is after all, the Oxford analog with Khalid City being London. 
• Jalmar Dax: Agile Beastmaster. Has a mental connection to his three animal companions but can be overly brutal. His personal quest is to prove that The Wild is also fighting back against The Dark and is trying to stop the Insiders from treating all the outside as inherently evil.
• Prenty Duffnot: Brawny Hunter. His Guardian tattoos give him superhuman strength but he is driven by personal revenge. His family disappeared at one of the sites marked by The Bloody Hands.

Rather than have a main plot, secondary plot, and tertiary plot as in the standard set-up of Tricube Solo, each character has their own plot: promotion, proving his cause, avenging his family. 

The vibe I have in mind is that sort of late 90s, early 00s mid-budget genre show. A few scenes, small locations doing a lot of lifting. Some dialogue. A few action set-pieces. Different overall locations each time. Each wraps up in a broad feeling of having progressed the plot, good or bad. Each scene has a few challenges and prompts that have single dice rolls to sum up (each). Very little action outside of this. Side characters just sort of pop up and drop out. Stuff is all in just a sentence or two.

I know this blog post seems to contrast to all that but in my Keep file it is basically just quick notes like: "Hub is academic town." "Resonant Bubbles spread across the lands." "The Bloody Hands are agents of the Dark. Team is trying to find them and stop them." 

The Oracle

One change I made to Tricube Solo is using my own oracle, something brewing in the back of my mind. It is pretty simple and I might write it up in more details later:

• Roll 3D6 (honestly, any dice works)
• For each dice, a 1-3 is "no," a 4-6 is "yes."
• Two no = "no". Two yes = "yes". 
• If you get all three no or all three yes, it means no or yes but the answer is changing (the whole idea is inspired by The Coin Flip method of the I Ching but it modifies this to be a bit at a glance). This is not a "and" or "but" type thing, but a sense that something is at the cusp of a reversal. 
• 1s and 6s represent little twists, as appropriate to the overall answer. 1s add a bit of no (making it "yes, but..." or "no, and...") and 6s add a bit of yes ("no, but..." and "yes, and..."). Multiples either increase it or add an additional twist. You can have a "and..., but..." situation. 
• All three 6s or all three 1s are an extreme of their answer but are also undergoing change. The answer is really true (or really false) but in such a way the system is shifting.