ORX v.A.ni11a
This version of ORX: Nasty, Brutish & Short, nicknamed the v.A.ni11a version, is being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. That means you can take this, do whatever you want with it, change the text, add to it, subtract from it, publish it and sell it, as long as you allow anyone else to do the same with your work, and you include the author’s name (Raven Daegmorgan), this website (http://wildhunt.daegmorgan.net), and a copy of this notice.
This version of ORX has been stripped of the wonderful illustrations by Jeremy Treuer, Jasper Polane, and Ed Heil, as well as all its humor, and layout. It just tells you how to play the game. That’s it. It’s very boring. But it is free.
You want the version with the artwork and the funny? Sorry, you missed the boat: after a five year run it is now out-of-print. If anyone had ever bothered to pirate it, you could find it on the pirate networks, but sadly no one did.
Introduction
The Concept
Orx is a poke in the eye at tradition and establishment. While seemingly a humor-biased game, it can be as serious as you want it to be.
The game is simple by design, complex in play. You begin by assigning dice to three different scores and adding some other details, then players take turns choosing a die to roll against the gamemaster (or each other) and narrating the results of those rolls into a tale.
While it requires a degree of out-of-character tactical thinking and even a bit of resource management, as it plays out as a contest between players and against the gamemaster and Fate, it also requires creativity and the mutual desire to weave a good tale.
What You Need To Play
You will need four people — three to play the orcs and the other to be the gamemaster — some pencils and paper, a bowl-full of polyhedral dice of various sizes (a number each of d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, d12s and d20s — you can get these at your local book or hobby store), and a desire to think on your feet and take the course of the story into your own hands.
How to Play
If you are familiar with other role-playing games, Orx will seem a bit different, since rather than telling the other players that you “swing your sword at the human scumbag” and then rolling to see if you actually hit the target, this is reversed in Orx, as you roll and then you decide what it was you were even doing, with the rolling player to providing an in-game rationale for the die results based on the conflict and items on his character sheet.
The best way to describe the play of this game is: “If Orx were a play, the dice rolls would form the script to be followed by the players.” That is, the dice tell you what’s happening, so you play out what the dice tell you to play out, with some freedom on the part of the player to describe exactly why and how things are playing out that way.
Despite the narrative freedom, a failure is a failure; you can’t succeed with a roll you failed. This is to get past that whole “ego” concept in RPGs, the “character inviolability” concept, where ‘your guy” is always the way you want them to be, always acts in a specific manner and never, ever does anything you don’t want them to do or says anything foolish.
Your orc is not a paper doll for your ego. He’s a narrative construct to tell stories with!
This can all be summed up as Rule One: “Always roll the dice. No matter what.” That is, no one may have their orc take an action or speak in character without first rolling the dice.
Everything in Orx is measured in terms of dice, and everyone is constrained by the sizes and numbers of dice they have and can roll, including the gamemaster.
The size of a die used (d4, d6, etc.) doesn’t represent comparable levels of ability or skill, or any sort of concrete, scalar measurement. Rather, the size chosen measures the relative danger level of a situation or individual. This is how you can have a dragon with a midling-sized die assigned to it…that doesn’t mean the dragon’s flaming breath isn’t powerful, or that it is only as strong as the average human, or anything remotely similar, it just means that the thing is of average danger to the orcs in that situation.
Similarly, there are no heavily-detailed, round-by-round, blow-by-blow, die-by-die combats or other situations. One situation = one roll. No more, no less. Each roll is a functional overview of a situation, consisting of a short paragraph or two of description.
Likewise, there are no petty-action rolls in Orx. In fact, there are no specific “action” rolls at all(!) (that is, rolls where the dice determine the results of specific tasks like the swing of a sword, creeping silently down a hallway, or casting a spell). Sure, any of those could be a part of the narration, but situations in Orx tend to be broader in scope.
Due to the above method (one conflict = one roll) and the game’s structure, players tend to “lose” more often since there are no sudden mechanical turnabouts or averaging of probabilities during an attempt to resolve a situation; but Orx is not about winning or characters achieving their goals…it’s about orcs!
The rules are designed to lead ultimately to the orcs’ defeat, or rather, their deaths. They are designed to mirror a doomed struggle against fate and eventuality. Orx is about seeing what you can do with what you’re given, it’s about humor and tragedy. Keep that in mind and you’ll enjoy yourself much more than if you whine and simper about how your orc just can’t get a break.
Another change from the standard idea of there being no winners or losers in an RPG is that every session of Orx has a clear winner. The player whose orc has the most “Loot” at the end of a session is declared the winner. The ability to win also serves to push play forward by providing a clear goal for the players to strive for, and allows the gamemaster to easily create and focus a variety of adventures.
Since there are only a couple of limited ways to get Loot, the only way to win the game will be to make sacrifices, take chances, and disaffect your bosom companions through violence, backstabbing, and greedy, calculated selfishness.
That’s how the game is played.
Who’s Running Things?
The gamemaster is just another player, but he doesn’t get an orc. Instead, it is his responsibility to keep play flowing smoothly, and is the one in charge of everything that is not the orcs. The gamemaster needs to be able to deal with creating Scenes, coming up with Conflicts (when the players don’t provide him with immediate and obvious ones), as well as handling the adjudication of the rules, such as they are, particularly if disagreements arise.
However, even though the gamemaster controls all this, he is not the sole individual in charge of “what happens.” The players still describe whatever their orc is doing, and the results, win or lose, including what happens in each Scene beyond the gamemaster’s initial overview of such.
Getting Into The Mood
There are a number of ways to play Orx, some which it is best suited towards given its mechanics and subject matter. Orx works most strongly when adhering to the elements of a comedy, adventure, or grim tale, or as some mix of two of these three.
Each group must decide on its own what Mood the game will be played in, which determines the story elements the narrative portions of play will develop and express. It is very important that everyone in the group be committed to that Mood in play, or the game just isn’t going to work.
Imagine trying to experience a game of high-action and heroic-adventure while your buddy is constantly cracking crude jokes and having his orc kick nice old ladies: there is not much chance the experience will be rewarding or fulfilling.
Talk about this before play begins, it is up to the whole group to decide on and commit to a Mood.
Comedic: Orcish humor is nasty, painful, slapstick kind of stuff, but that doesn’t mean you have to stick to that formula. Any kind of comedy works. I’ve found most groups like to get a session or two of really farcical, low humor out of their system before digging into anything else Orx has to offer, including more satirical, high comedy that comments on politics, society or morality through the medium of the orcs and their (mis)adventures.
What’s the difference?
-x- Farce presents highly exaggerated caricatures of archetypal characters and unlikely plots featuring sexual mix-ups, verbal humor, and physical comedy.
-x- Satire, on the other hand, attacks philosophical notions or political practices as well as general deviations from social norms by ridiculing the characters, who exist to be laughed “at” rather than “with.”
You can also go the route of parody (or spoof) with either of the above, taking some well-known or cult-classic movie, book, or comic and making fun of it by making the main characters into orcs, or approaching the situation from an orcish point of view and behavior. Perhaps a game of “Lord of the Rings” where Aragorn, Gandalf, and the rest of the Fellowship are all orcs, chased by a bunch of smelly dwarves and their ancient, evil, power-hungry elvish overlord.
A farce would be a low-humor slapstick festival of puns, wacky characters, and amusing situations not necessarily closely related to the original fiction, while a satire would involve commentary on social issues such as the perceived racism inherent in the different treatment of and assumptions about the natures of orcs and elves in the parent literature.
Grim: Bleak and depressing, or scary and frightening stuff are the meat of gothic tales, tragedies, and horror stories. Games of Orx that fall into this dark category generally tend to feature the orcs as villains, who (even as a group) are fighting among themselves, like the orcs in J.R.R. Tolkien’s works, or such games may present orcs confronting desperate, terrifying situations with truly grim results. Or both; they’re certainly not mutually exclusive of one another. There are subtle differences between the various types of play that can be had from a grim game of Orx, but the elements of each are generally interchangeable with one another.
-x- Gothic games are usually set in desolate or remote settings, and deal with macabre, mysterious, or violent events. Good examples of this style are Mary Shelly’s novel “Frankenstein”, and nearly anything by Edgar Allan Poe.
-x- Tragedies deal with conflicts between the orcs and an unconquerable force (often fate or destiny), which ultimately resolves itself in sorrow or disaster for the orcs, their ideals, or well-meaning designs — tragedies result in conclusions that should inspire pity for the orcs, or an intellectual terror in the players. Note that it is very difficult for villains to be the protagonists in a tragedy, because we want villains to generally get what they deserve. Hence the sympathy, and thus tragedy, is usually with the villains’ victims. That isn’t to say it can’t be done that way, though most tragedies whose protagonists are villains are actually of the next type.
-x- Horror games deal with events that cause painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay, or situations causing intense aversion or repugnance. Though horror is often tied to the supernatural, it is not required for a game to be categorized as horror.
Adventure: The struggle against oppression, treasure hunting in trap-and-monster-laden crypts, action-oriented swordplay and derring-do make for adventure-themed games. Of course, orcs aren’t generally heroic, but any of the elements alone or in combination make for adventure games: what is important is the overcoming of dangerous or deadly obstacles and lots of bang-snap action.
-x- Heroic games are those which center on vengeance against wicked acts or individuals, or the battles and struggles of the forces of righteousness, justice, and compassion, usually against the forces of immorality, injustice, and cruelty…though the conflict may simply be against difficult circumstance. They’re about saving people for all the right reasons, whether that’s from terrorists or tornadoes.
-x- Action games deal with amazing feats of derring-do, not necessarily for selfless or moral reasons. Rather, such tales tend to be amoral (even if they contain elements of good guy vs. bad guy), which is the main difference between heroic-adventure and action-adventure. Treasure hunts like the Indiana Jones series of movies are examples of action games, as are the slew of Hollywood-produced “bad-ass martial artist” movies.
-x- Pulp is related to the above, though it tends to feature strong heroes and fantastic situations. Think of all those “B”-movies with giant alien/mutant invaders and the strong-chinned hero. Pulp is also oftentimes rightly considered “corny” or “campy” because of these traits.
There are, as mentioned, possible mixtures of these various Moods:
-x- Adventure Comedy involves (possibly bumbling) heroes in an otherwise wacky world full of off-color characters and odd, (farcically) dangerous situations. The bad guys in such games are often childish, yet powerful and evil miscreants, and they tend to get all the best (funny) lines. This style differs from comedy in that the heroes actually accomplish something of meaning and importance, usually outside the nominal conflict presented by the villains, as they are involved in real, meaningful personal or interpersonal conflicts. An example inspiration for this style of game can be found in Disney channel’s cartoon “Kim Possible.”
-x- Grim Comedy (also known as Dark Comedy) is particularly fun to play, and many games of Orx gravitate towards this style. The humor in such games tends to be bleak and morbid, and usually involves severe pain of some sort inflicted upon the protagonists, or those around them. The characters in such play rarely recognize the humor of the situations around them, though their players do. Many of Shakespeare’s later plays, such as “The Tempest” were dark comedies, as is the film “Pulp Fiction.”
-x- Grim Adventure (also called Dark Fantasy) may involve anti-heroes and villains who are indistinguishable from the heroes, but mainly it deals with grittier or more “realistic” events and situations than heroic adventure does. “Heroism” occurs in small measurements, and it is never over-the-top, improbable, or fantastic.
This is perhaps the most difficult style to pull off without dedicated players. The original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, and the Elric books by Michael Moorcock are examples of this style.
Part One: Orc Parts
The things you’ll learn in character creation are a foundational cornerstone to the system and will provide you and your group with a good overview of what the rest of the text is actually talking about. Plus you can get right into the game without knowing (or needing to know) anything else about the system.
Makin’ Babies
Whether new orcs sprout (painfully) from their parent like a bud on a tree, are forcibly bred in dark pits from gruesome combinations of other beings and creatures, or emerge fully-grown from nasty sacks of goo, one orc is created mechanically just like any other orc.
Each orc has three scores we call “Stats,” these are Brute, Nasty and Grok . Each of the three Stats has a die size assigned to it, from d4 (awful) to d20 (legendary), with d8 being moderate. Orcs are “created” by assigning one d10, one d8, and one d6 among the three Stats. A particular Stat can be increased by one die size by lowering another Stat by one die size.
For example, the d10 could be increased to a d12 by lowering the d6 to a d4 or the d8 to a d6.
0 — d4 — d6 — d8 — d10 — d12 — d20
An alternative method to the above is to allow a total of twenty-four die-sides to be assigned among the Stats (that is, the size of the dice in the stats total up to twenty-four). For example, a d10 is ten sides, a d4 is four sides, etc. No one can assign no dice to a Stat, known as a “Zeroed” Stat, which has nasty effects described later.
Note that d20′s are special: they’re reserved for truly obscene things like really mad dragons, upset deities, and legendary orcish heroes. It is the gamemaster’s option whether to allow orcs to increase their Stats up to d20 or not, as orcs with d20 Stats change the probability dynamics of the game considerably, so it should be considered carefully before being allowed.
Brute: Physical power, size, and overall toughness. This is your character’s physical Stat, so you can use this Stat to: deal with exhausting situations like when your orc is being whipped mercilessly to maintain a forced march, beating your lessers into submission, surviving a freezing plunge into a rushing river, and eating that mystery thing you found without becoming deathly ill.
Nasty: Respect, fear, and social standing. This is a measure of how well an orc can cow their subordinates, and how much of their own loot the orc’s lackeys are likely to hand over once the battle has ended. It literally is how nasty the orc is, both in his personal odor and appearance, but especially in his foul mannerisms. This Stat can be used to frighten or intimidate others into doing what you want them to do, to bargain with those stronger than you (or to whine and grovel) so they don’t do something horrible to you, or force someone to give you their food.
Grok: Cleverness, morale, even willpower. What they lack in brains, orcs sometimes make up for in instinctual, animalistic cunning, making them ignorant but dangerous. An orc uses Grok to do things like figure out where he left something, plan a raid, tie his bootlaces, notice that door hidden behind the curtain, actually count his gold, and figure out whether that thing he found is edible.
Bob & Tharg In The Morning: Bob decides he is going to play an orc who solves most of his problems in typical orcish fashion: by hitting them. Thus is born Tharg. Bob assigns his orc’s highest die, the d10, to Brute. Having a d8 and a d6 left to assign, Bob decides that when brute strength fails, Tharg falls back on guile rather than browbeating or threats, and assigns the d8 to Grok, making Tharg a big but clever type. Finally, he places the d6 in Nasty.
Nathan’s Bark is Worse Than His Bite: Nathan decides his orc, Bark, is the runt of the litter, used to tricking and weaseling his way through orcish society, and thus assigns the d10 to his orc’s Grok. Next, Nathan puts the d8 in his orc’s Nasty, because he prefers an orc who talks tough and uses threats when he is found out, meaning his d6 goes to Brute because Bark is the runt. Nathan further decides he wants his orc to be viciously cunning, and so he trades up his Grok to a d12; not wanting to be left with two weak scores (two d6′s), he chooses to reduce his Brute to a meager d4 to keep his Nasty at d8.
Mike Salutes You With One of His Three-Fingers: Mike decides early on he wants a nasty shaman-type orc used to getting his way through intimidation and magical compulsions, but also one who isn’t as clever as he thinks. Thus, Mike places a d10 in his orc’s Nasty, to represent the intimidating nature of the orc, the d6 in Grok, and the d8 goes to his Brute score. He names the orc Three-fingers, after one of the disfigurements the orc suffers.
Getting to Know Your Orc
In this game, your character doesn’t need an equipment list. An orc either has something or doesn’t, based on whether his roll was successful or not and the established fiction, as a player can simply narrate his orc having any item. The same goes for skill lists, weapon lists, and magical powers. So you can describe your orc with any weapon or magic you choose.
Weapons and spells don’t have “damage” or “effects”, they are just for “flavor”.
Instead, your orc has “Descriptors”: short phrases, items, or skill-like abilities that can be used to gain extra dice for a roll. Each orc begins with three Descriptors, though more can be bought during play.
Descriptors are things like “Hunter,” “Warrior”, “Crack-shot,” “Trained in Two Weapons,” “Distance Spitting Champion”, “Mojo”, “Nose-picking,” “Big Battle Axe” or “Servant Demon in a Bottle.”
Mechanically, Descriptors are not rated by die size like Stats are; instead, they provide an extra roll of the Stat die used for a roll. This means your orc is as mechanically well-off using a gigantic, wickedly serrated axe as he is punching bare-fisted, but if you have “Giant Wickedly Serrated Axe” as a Descriptor and someone else doesn’t have “Massive Fists”, you get to roll two dice and pick the best one and the person without the Descriptor doesn’t.
Descriptors are best understood to be like visual or narrative “catch phrases” for your orc. They set him apart as a discrete entity. They say, “This is what my guy is all about” and “This is how you know it’s my guy” and “This is my guy’s style.”
Note: it is important to choose names for your Descriptors that match the mood and style of the game being played. Amusing or humorous Descriptors are out of place in a Grim or Heroic game, and can undermine the game as much as giving your orc a humorous or off-color pun for a name would. Of course, “funny” is par-for-the-course in a Comedic game of Orx, and in such a case entirely appropriate.
Mike chooses Three-finger’s three starting Descriptors to reinforce the image he has of Three-fingers: “Shaman’s Bone Rattle,” “Weird Googly Eyes” and “Hopping Mad.”
Three-fingers is facing a nasty, brutish half-ogre and trying to get into the cave the big,ugly thing is guarding. Mike decides to roll his Nasty at d10, and supplement that roll by using a Descriptor, in this case “Weird Googly Eyes.”
The gamemaster rolls a d10 for the half-ogre, and receives a roll of 8. Now Mike rolls two d10 for Three-fingers — one for the Stat, and another roll of the same for using a Descriptor — and the dice come up as a 4 and a 10. Since 10 is higher than 8, Mike has rolled a success!
Three-fingers gives the dumb half-ogre one of those horrible orcish-shaman curse-type stares (complimented by his weird, icky eyes), mutters something dreadful about the terrible powers he can bring to bear, and the brute leaps quickly out of the scary orc’s way.
Orcish Mojo
Since there is no set spell-list or limits to powers, all orcs can have magic. The player just describes the ritual the orc performed as well as its effects (or lack thereof) in the narration.
You could also make a magic Descriptor to get that all important bonus roll to the attempt: anything from a superstition, to an actual charm or enchantment, to a lucky rabbit’s foot, to the feathered head-dress of his (or her) ancestors, to a title or skill like “shaman” or “witch doctor” or just “knows magic”.
Fate and Fatalism
Your orc’s Fate measures the relative chance he has of dying. The number of Fate points an orc has increases the danger he is in when he suffers serious injuries, as they provide the gamemaster with a target number to roll under in an attempt to kill the orc at certain junctures in the game.
Orcs always start with one point of Fate and can gain more as the game progresses.
The gain of Fate is always up to the player, as a player can borrow one or more dice of Fate from the gamemaster and roll them in addition to their Stat die (or dice) for their current roll. For each Fate die so borrowed by a player (regardless of the size of the borrowed die), the player’s orc gains a Fate point.
Growing Like a Fungus
Once a point of Fate is gained, the player can spend it during the game to: get a new Descriptor, increase a Stat by one die size, win a conflict without rolling, or anything else. Once spent, you cross the Fate point off but it still counts towards your orc’s total Fate. Crossing it off signifies you can’t spend it again.
During the course of play, Nathan has borrowed a number of Fate dice, and his current total Fate is now at 5. He hasn’t spent any of those points yet, but chooses to add a new Descriptor or two to his orc, Bark. He spends two Fate points and adds two new Descriptors based on recent events in the orc’s life: “Poisoned Dagger” (his favorite weapon) and “Rabies” (the results of a recent fight with a giant badger). His total Fate is still 5, but he can only spend three of those points now as two have been spent.
Fate points can be spent any time in play.
Treasure and Loot
The treasure an orc can earn is measured in points of “Loot.” Loot represents the physical possessions and trappings of material wealth that come with all successful raiding, pillaging, and adventuring.
Mechanically, Loot forces the gamemaster to ignore an amount of the orc’s Fate equal to the orc’s Loot when he makes a Fate roll against that orc. However, no matter how much Loot you have, your orc’s Fate can never go below 1, and once an orc’s Loot is gone the amount of Fate it offsets reinstates itself. Note that those points of Fate have not vanished or been removed, and unspent “ignored” Fate can still be spent.
The Heart of Xoshurr is worth 5 Loot, so the lucky owner gets to ignore 5 points of Fate…at least until he loses possession of the Heart or spends the Loot. If Bark, with a total Fate of 5 owns the Heart, his effective Fate score is only 1 (it would be 0, but Fate cannot go below 1) — but he can still spend 5 points of Fate to gain Descriptors because he still has those points, even though they are not counted for purposes of the gamemaster’s Fate rolls against that orc.
If Bob later has Tharg (successfully) steal the Heart from Bark, and assuming Bark hasn’t picked up any other Loot, then Bark’s effective Fate will once again match his total Fate of 5.
Unlike Descriptors, you can’t start the game with Loot — you can only earn it during play by confronting danger. If your orc survives a whole session of play, he automatically gets one point of Loot. And if the gamemaster made Fate rolls against your orc, the orc’s player gains an amount of Loot equal in value to the number of rolls!
Bob’s orc, Tharg, zeroed his Brute Stat once during the session, and survived the ensuing Fate roll. So, having survived the session, and a Fate roll, he gains two points of Loot at the end of the game session. Bob marks these points down on his character sheet and describes each point separately: the first point is a “Concubine” and the second is “His Enemy’s Skull.”
Once your orc gets himself some Loot, write its value down on your character sheet along with some clever description of what it is — usually some trophy of the orc’s (mis)adventures.
Your orc will need to be strong enough to actually hang onto his Loot for it to do him any lasting good, because otherwise his buddies are just going to take it from him. Other orcs can take Loot from your orc by declaring their intent to do so and winning a roll against your orc.
When an orc dies, his Loot goes away; the stuff it represents might still be there, but the Loot value itself is gone and cannot be collected by another player. This keeps players from collecting Loot without putting their own orc in any danger, or just hanging around like a vulture. There is one exception to this rule: if the pilfering orc is the one directly responsible for the other orc’s death, he can take that orc’s Loot.
Spending Your Hard-Earned Cash
Beyond curtailing the effects of Fate, Loot can be used to purchase temporary Descriptors.
A temporary Descriptor costs one point of Loot and acts and can be used in all ways like regular Descriptor, but only for one roll. Succeed or fail, the temporary Descriptor is gone upon being used along with the Loot spent to buy it. Items worth multiple points of Loot can be spent one point at a time if desired. This doesn’t mean the Loot gets “less powerful” or “broken” or “lost” or anything. The reduction of the Loot score is strictly a mechanical effect.
Bark gets a “Pouch of Gold (Loot 1)” after clubbing a half-blind beggar unconscious in an alleyway. Instead of hanging onto it for its Fate reducing value (fearing more the clubs of his greedy companions), he spends it quickly and purchases the temporary Descriptor of “Length of Climbing Rope.” Bark’s player now erases the Pouch of Gold and its associated point of Loot from this character sheet.
Three-fingers decides to purchase a temporary Descriptor and so spends a point of Loot from the Heart of Xoshuur. The Heart previously had a Loot value of 5, but that value is now reduced to 4. As is to be expected, Three-fingers can now only ignore 4 points of Fate, not 5, since the Heart is no longer worth 5 points of Loot.
If another player’s orc steals the Heart from Three-fingers, the Loot does not return to its former value of 5, but remains at a value of 4. If that orc spends more of the Loot before Three-fingers (or another orc) steals it back, then the Loot has even less value, and allows even fewer points of Fate to be ignored.
For example, Three-fingers has retained ownership of the Heart of Xoshuur and used up its Loot properties in play. Now, Mike spends a point of Fate to make the Heart a Descriptor for his orc, describing it as some kind of powerful magical-shamanic fetish. Three-fingers now has a fourth Descriptor he can roll when things get tough!
Loot can only be spent at the beginning or end of a session, not during, unless an orc also spends a Fate point for an “Equipment Break.”
My Dead Orc
When your orc dies, total his spent Fate and add it to your Loot. If the total is equal to or greater than one of the die-sizes (4, 6, 8, etc.) reduce your next orc’s total Stats by one die-size for each die-size you match or pass. If you are using the point-creation method instead, reduce the available points you have to create your orc by two for every die-size the total met or passed. You can mix and match Stats for this purpose, but you cannot give your new orc less than a d4 in any Stat. If your total from Fate and Loot is twenty or more, your next orc can only start out with a d4 in each Stat.
Feeling Orcish
Add color and fluff to your orc. Appearance, attitude, belongings, desires, hatreds, homeland or tribe, short history, companions, acquaintances, etc. Is your orc a barbarian tribesman, a wandering nomad, or a warrior who hails from a dirty, stinking, orcish city? Does he have a war-mount like a giant wolf or lizard-bat thing? Any of these could be Descriptors, too!
One note: all the following is just to get you started. It’s our conception of what orcs are like, or at least a quick sketch of one possibility, and some advice. If anything in the following sections doesn’t match the orcs as you want them to be in your game, do what you will with your orcs.
Also, for those of you less interested in orcishness and social commentary, and more interested in playing this game, you can skip right to Part Two of the book, and start learning how to play; you can always come back to this section later.
Where Orcs Live
The greedy gods of the elves, dwarves, and humans grabbed up the best living spaces for their children, leaving only the foulest, least livable lands for the orcish race: wastelands, swamps, frozen tundra, and volcanic barrens where they are forced to live in squalor, fighting to survive every minute — but survive they do, against all odds.
“Orcs was first. Great Orc God was proud. Then the rest of ‘em came and stole what was ours. Great Orc God didn’t like them much. The end.”
Orcs also live in caves, dungeons, and massive, poorly constructed, semi-nomadic army enclaves, complete with hide tents. Never mind that orcs from the various tribes don’t quite get along. Brawling, fighting, drinking, fighting some more…what’s a Dark Master to do? Send in the shock enforcer troops: giants, ogres, and other nasty beasties to keep the peace!
Orcish Appearance
Are there different breeds of orc? Are they hairy or bald? Are some taller than others, or shorter? It’s up to each group of players needs to decide for themselves what orcs look like — black, green, grayish, white or maroon, with pig-snouts or without, fanged and boar-tusked, separated into distinctive “types”, chaotic or homogenous in appearance. Consider the following “for inspiration”.
Orcs are ugly, and I mean others being just too terrified to even look at them comfortably, scary-oh-my-god-what-is-that-ugly. Ugliness is the most difficult mark of respect to attain among orcs, being that it is usually an accident of birth. An orc so ugly his mother tried to kill him by beating him against a rock after he was born is an example of a highly respected orc.
Luckily, many well-meaning orc mothers try to “beat the ugly” out of their children and only succeed in making it worse. Many orcs also go the extra mile, either by design or accident, and beat their face into a rock until it is deformed, or sharpen their teeth and bite themselves for that trés chic “horribly scarred by vicious animal bites” effect.
Orcish ugliness is an outward reflection of their barbaric, violent, sadistic natures, instilled in them by the circumstances of their creation, either individually or racially. They are a horrible corruption of the natural order of things: monsters with human shape, whose appearance and behavior dangerously crosses the line between man and beast, while being neither.
Orcs have misshapen, almost bestial faces with yellow or red eyes and yellowed fangs; their arms are hideously long, like an ape’s, and end in claw-like hands. They move in inhuman ways, swaggering and creeping, shuffling and hopping, arms swinging low, backs bent, sniffing at the air, sneering at unseen spirits.
The Not-so Secret Lives of Orcs
“Nasty, brutish, and short” — this phrase describes everything you need to know about orcs, excepting their appearance, since most orcs are pretty damn big (though the short ones tend to make up in the first two qualities what they lack in size); so short really refers to their temperament, or their tempers, rather.
In fact, this phrase describes all aspects of orcish life: their philosophy, their dining habits, their typical life quality and span, their fights, their myths and legends, their attention spans, their mothers, and even their sex life.
If something in culture or methodology ever violates any of the above three qualities, it isn’t part of the orcish mindset and they won’t do it. Heck, there isn’t an orcish ceremony more than a few minutes long, including the right of succession for leadership, which isn’t essentially any different from any other orcish ceremony — that is, it generally consists of someone kicking the living snot out of someone else, accompanied by a lot of blood, and then everyone getting on with things.
Orcish Manners
Orcs don’t bathe and they’re scared of water, anyways — the joke is that an orc can raise his arms and knock out an army with the stench.
According to the other races orcs are an uncultured and brutal people, chaotic and undisciplined. They are distinguished from the so-called “noble” races because they do not strive for higher goals or try to elevate themselves.
Orcs take pleasure in destruction and pain, in the defilement of all that is fair, and deliberately create and wallow in filth and ruin. Their behavior is often compared to that of rabid beasts.
As befits, orcish speech is vulgar, with no regard for the beauty of words and little grammatical coherency. The language is more like the noises of an animal than the speech of a man. The actual “language” is an abominable and incoherent mix of hisses, mutters, snarls and growls, often meaningless except for the dark emotions such express.
When they do speak understandably, they are crude and impolite, they call each other “swine” and “maggots,” curse at their leaders, and laugh only with malicious intent — making their speech an accurate reflection of their most basic thoughts and desires.
They obey their base urges and whims, and utterly lack the quality of self-control, and they have a habit of simply following their destructive instincts to whatever end it leads…usually their own, untimely one.
At the same time, when cowed and commanded by a stronger will, orcs are organized and servile, even eager to be led around, like a pack of ill-tempered dogs. Even when controlled, they are still disorderly, always ready to quarrel and fight over the slightest issue according to their base urges.
In a group, orcs are willing puppets in the hands of greater destructive powers, and thus are almost always enslaved to and invested in the plans of some Dark Master. Because their innate penchant for self-destruction is checked only through the brutal and savage discipline of their masters, orcish mobs are controlled through strength, intimidation, fear, and murder.
Even given targets upon which to vent their mindless rage, it is only the fear and hate of a totalitarian masters that keeps groups of orcs together for very long. Without these masters, orcs scatter in all directions, aimless and lost, seized by internal arguments and constant, vicious power struggles, fighting among themselves until extinct…a fate the other races can only dream of for the squalid, pillaging orcish hordes!
Unfortunately, there’s always a leader to pull them together: a big orc, a bigger ogre, a small dragon, an ancient evil wizard-god, a tentacled horror from the ocean deeps, etc.
What Orcs Think
Stupid elven propaganda! Orcs really aren’t the disgusting, foul, moronic villains everyone makes them out to be. Well, at least not as much as they are made out to be.
Orcs consider themselves to be a proud, noble and definitely more civilized race than any others. They are convinced that at the beginning of time, when the races were formed, the Gods of the other races became so jealous of the numerous superior qualities of the orcish race that they determined to make certain that the orcs would never be allowed to rise to their true place as masters of the world.
Is it any wonder that orcs are viewed as brutal savages by the other races, considering their enforced living conditions and the fact that the very Gods are against them? Life is harsh, thus so is the orc — according to the orc. In reality, the image of the orc as a bloodthirsty reaver is only half the picture; orcs have a social structure based on concepts of honor and personal achievement. But the fact that it is rife with contradictions in purpose and action is lost upon them as a whole.
For example, orcs respect personal achievement and power: if you do something grand, you are worthy of a grand title; if you clobber someone grand, you get his title, since you are obviously grander than they were. If you have respect, others listen to you…and if they don’t, you clobber them to remind them how much grander you are than they are.
To the orc, this sort of personal gratification and adoration is the only goal worth considering. He tends to believe that unless it benefits him as an individual (such as not being clobbered) it isn’t worth doing. At the same time, the orc recognizes that it is useful to have others around, if for no more reason than to act as buffers between them and getting clobbered, though also because with the command of others, your own strength and power increase.
If others will guard you because they fear your wrath, they’ll face anything really dangerous first, and if they don’t, you’ll pummel them until they wish they had. You see, orcish heroes — those who can list battles they’ve fought in (and survived), warriors they’ve killed, loot they’ve plundered, injuries they’ve lived through and so forth — aren’t like the heroes of other races. When the odds seem impossible and the world seems to be against them, they don’t strive bravely forward to meet doom face to face — they cower and whimper and live to fight another day (preferably when doom’s back is turned).
This is why the armies of darkness put more reliable and much bigger creatures in charge of the endless orcish legions, the orcs won’t flee if flight entails the wrath of some big, nasty goober behind them, whipping them on with threats and dire curses and the occasional pummeling with flame and magic.
In typical orcish fashion, cripples and wounded have to prove themselves just as capable as they were before their injury, because cowardice and weakness aren’t grand things. Old heroes don’t get to sit back and bounce baby orcs on their knees telling them all about their glory days — the whelps would probably bite them if they tried. To the orc, yesterday isn’t grand or heroic; what was done yesterday was done yesterday, all that matters is how strong they are today.
We see the contradiction: the orc handles challenge directly contrary to their own cultural beliefs, cowering and sniveling and running away until they can sneak up on the problem or until they are more powerful than it. All the grand things an orc is praised for are those things that they knew they could do before trying, or could get away with and lie about their methods and behavior afterwards.
How is it that orcs are still viewed as savages and raiders?
Quite simply, the members of other races aren’t as large or as strong as the orcs are, so orcs aren’t afraid of human villagers or a few wandering mercenaries, because they know what a lovely squishing sound they make. If the orc is bigger than it, he isn’t afraid of it; if he can clobber it, he’s not a coward.
Orcs are great and powerful warriors. So says the orc. You play an orc. You are a great and powerful warrior. At least until something bigger than you comes along, then you’re a mewling, cowering minion. But if you ask the orc, that’s not the way it is at all.
Part Two: Dice or Die
Rolling the Bones
To resolve situations that arise during the game, the player chooses a Stat and rolls a die of the size specified by that Stat. Other factors may result in more than one die being rolled by the player.
The opposition also rolls a die of a chosen size, which does not have to be the same size as that rolled by the player, and the results of the two (or more) rolls are compared.
If your roll is higher than the opposing roll, your orc succeeds, overcoming the current obstacle!
Tharg confronts Three-fingers over ownership of a nice vase they’ve looted, since it matches the tea set he picked up at the same place. Bob and Mike roll against one another, Brute (d10) against Nasty (d10), Bob rolling an 8 and Mike rolling a 5. Tharg wins the contest and takes the vase for his tea set, leaving Mike to plot his revenge.
Tying the Knot
When a roll ties, the individual rolling the die with more sides wins the contest. If neither participant has the larger die, then both take an injury to the initial Stat chosen (if applicable) and each must roll again. If a contestant cannot roll another die for some reason, they lose.
The gamemaster might instead implement a second roll for any and all ties instead, but make the participants choose a different Stat die than the one chosen for the tied roll.
Stats and Rolls
ANY Stat can be used for ANY situation occurring in the game, there is no set list of what Stat can be or could be used in what situation. You can narrate pretty much whatever you like to make sense of the choice, including how the Stat and Descriptor tie into the results, as long as the group agrees it is reasonable, and reasonably amusing or exciting.
Take combat as an example situation: there isn’t any “fighting” Stat or anything similar in Orx, you roll whichever die you want and narrate the attack using that Stat.
Nathan uses Bark’s Grok in a swordfight against a rival — if he wins the roll, he can describe how his orc used its cleverness or wits in some manner to win the conflict.
Assuming Nathan’s roll wins, he describes throwing sand into his rival’s eyes while the other was rushing, blade bared. Nathan then describes how Bark sucker-punches the rival in the gut (or, hell, just runs him through) while the poor, unprepared sap tears up from the dirty trick.
So why would you ever use anything but your highest Stat in a roll? Well, there’s no reason not to use anything but your highest Stat all the time! This is intentional; it makes a point about your orc…for example, making Tharg’s Brute Stat the highest means Tharg mostly uses might and violence to get his way, because that’s what usually works for him. When Tharg’s might starts failing him, he might have to resort to persuasion or cleverness.
Descriptors and Rolls
As with Stats above, ANY Descriptor is applicable in ANY situation. There is no set list of what Descriptor can be used in what situation. This means, for example, you can roll your nose-picking Descriptor any time during a Scene (if you haven’t yet used it) to get a bonus roll, just as long as you utilize nose-picking somehow in the resulting narration — it doesn’t even have to have anything to do with the success or failure! The trick to Orx is that it’s all mechanical, the names of Descriptors are just colorful bits tacked onto their function in providing bonus rolls.
The gamemaster declares a Conflict against Tharg: he’s facing a gang of nasty goblins (d12). Tharg’s player, Bob, rolls his orc’s Brute (d8), but decides he needs a little more help, maybe another roll in case things go badly with the first, so he chooses to use his “Nose-picking” Descriptor. The gamemaster rolls d12 with a result of 7.
Bob rolls two d8′s, resulting in a 4 and an 8. Yes! Tharg wins! Bob then narrates, “Tharg’s axe cleaves through the skull of the last goblin and he sighs, ‘Whew, that was tough!’ Then jams one dirty finger up his nose to dig a loose booger free, and flicks it away after cursory examination.”
Conflicts
Conflicts are at the heart of the game: an instance of two people rolling dice against one another to determine a victor and narration rights. Any action or series of actions an orc undertakes is a Conflict; they can be physical, mental or social — they can be battling enemies, smashing open a blocked gateway, wrestling a rival, keeping watch for enemies, remembering the pleas necessary to invoke the orcish gods, deciphering a riddle, bullying around subordinates, conniving and whining your way out of trouble, convincing your friends to do something, sneaking through the woods without being spotted, or anything else.
As an example, if the orcs are waylaying hapless travelers in the wood in hopes of gaining coin, some of the Conflicts that could be used are:
-x- Avoiding being spotted by their mark, by remaining hidden long enough to get the drop on him.
-x-Getting through the wood itself with all its brambles and brush to assault their mark.
-x-Bludgeoning or tricking inferiors into assaulting the mark first.
-x-Overcoming or merely surviving the magic of the wizard they unknowingly end up jumping.
More information on Conflicts, such as who gets to declare a Conflict is occurring, what form that Conflict takes, and how to describe the set-up and results of a Conflict can be found in the text of Part Three of these rules.
Keeping Your Friends Close
Conflicts can also be initiated by one player against another — any instance of the orcs interacting with one another: arguing and browbeating, fighting, tricking one another, planning, and so forth.
The Nature of Scenes
If Conflicts are the “what” of Orx, then Scenes are the “where.” All play in Orx is divided into Scenes, and Scenes are built around Conflicts. Most Scenes include a minimum of three Conflicts, and likely more, depending on the number of dice the gamemaster spends during the Scene.
The “length” of a Scene is abstract and measured only in terms of the number of dice the gamemaster has and uses to oppose the orcs, rather than any actual time-scale like “minutes”, “hours”, “days” or “years” (in fact, a Scene could last as long as any of those).
The division of one Scene from another doesn’t need to make perfect literary sense — they are abstract units of measurement utilized for mechanical purposes and exist solely to define the period during which an orc remains affected by certain penalties or bonuses, and to serve as a limit on the ability of a player to declare the use of certain mechanical opportunities in the system (such as the use of Fate, Descriptors, Complications, and so forth).
Scenes should also not be confused with restrictions to a specific location or setting. Depending on the needs of the game at any given point, a Scene can take place in anything from a single room or specific spot on the street, to a broad generalized location such as an entire hotel and a few city blocks. The scope of a Scene’s setting simply depends on the nature of the Conflicts in the Scene.
To reach the human king in a brawling melee (in order to kill the pink-skinned bastard), the orcs might have to get through the mass of combatants without getting hurt (gamemaster spends: d8), face off against the king’s guards (gamemaster spends: d10), and finally attack the king himself (gamemaster spends: d6).
Assuming the gamemaster spends no more dice to create another Conflict, and the orcs do not squabble amongst themselves, the Scene is now over because the gamemaster is out of dice.
Tharg is sitting in a small room in the back of a seedy tavern used by the Dark Lord’s troops for carousing, trying to procure a deal with Shumgor, the half-ogre captain of the Black City’s guard force.
Depending on what occurs, the location of the Scene might expand to include the entire bar — say, for example, Grraka starts a fight, which then explodes into the rest of the establishment — or into a chase on the street(s) outside!
Enemies & Allies
Monsters, adventurers, traps, and the orc’s own kindred are some of the things the gamemaster gets to represent in the game. But the gamemaster can only throw opposition at the players a couple times during any one Scene, limiting the number of times he can try to take their orcs down a notch through injury. This limit is enforced by the following rule: the gamemaster may only create enemies and obstacles in a Scene by spending dice.
Allies, non-hostile NPCs, and other helpful beings and stuff, if to have a mechanical effect, must be created as Descriptors for individual orcs. Otherwise, they are background Scene elements that can be used in narration.
Breaking Up The Scenery
At the start of each Scene, the gamemaster automatically receives three Scene dice — a d6, d8 and d10 (or a total of 24 sides, depending on the rule your group is using) — to be assigned to elements of the Scene that interfere with the orcs, whether those elements are creatures, obstacles or both. Unlike Fate dice, the players cannot borrow Scene dice.
A pit-trap the orcs stumble into in the corridor of a wizard’s tower might be assigned a d10 while the magically-sealed door they reach once beyond the former nastiness might be assigned the d8. This leaves six sides worth of dice available for anything else that might impede an orc in this Scene…unless the gamemaster uses Fate dice for more obstacles.
To be clear: the dice assigned to Scene elements by the gamemaster are not assigned to specific Stats (ie: Nasty, Brute and Grok), nor is the die chosen for a Scene element based on any inherent quality of the obstacle or creature, but on the difficulty the gamemaster perceives it should present the orc in the Conflict (or, more honestly, by how much he wants to hose the orc in question). The difficulty presented by any given creature or obstacle is a solely subjective judgment on the gamemaster’s part, and not subject to player argument.
Also, there are no wasted dice on the gamemaster’s part: if a die is spent on a Conflict with a scene element, it is rolled, and the orcs have to or are dealing with it — there is no “bypassing” a Scene die. Scene dice represent actual, real problems and danger right now, not just potential problems and dangers.
More Orcses!
The rules for Orx are written with the general assumption that there are three or fewer players. If that is not the case, the gamemaster does not get bonus Scene dice. It is in fact tactically advantageous for the gamemaster to focus all his attention upon one orc per Scene, and there is absolutely nothing in the rules which prevents him from doing so.
The Fate Pool
Fate dice are dice the gamemaster has at his disposal in addition to the Scene dice he receives at the start of each Scene. Unlike Scene dice, dice in the Fate pool carry over from Scene to Scene. Fate dice are permanently removed from the Fate pool after they are rolled by the gamemaster.
At the beginning of a session, the gamemaster automatically receives one d20 per orc to place in the Fate pool. At the end of each Scene the gamemaster automatically gets to put one die into the Fate pool per orc, each of a size equal to the largest Stat die that orc has at the end of the Scene.
During a Scene, Bark takes some injuries, lowering his Stats. At the close of the Scene, he has a d4 Brute, a d8 Nasty, and a d6 Grok. The gamemaster gets to add a d8 Fate die to the pool — d8 being Bark’s current highest Stat die. Without those injuries, the gamemaster would have received a d12 instead (the usual die size of Bark’s Grok).
In the same manner, the gamemaster would also add two more dice to the Fate pool — one die each for Three-fingers and Tharg — using the current largest Stat die of each of those other two orcs to determine the size of each die placed in the Fate pool.
Rolling the Bones Badly
When a player fails a roll it temporarily lowers the Stat they rolled by one die size for the remainder of the Scene. This is called an Injury.
Note this loss is not necessarily representative of actual, physical damage to the orc. Injury to a Stat is only a measure of mechanically reduced effectiveness for that Stat, without necessarily mapping that reduced effectiveness to the character as an injury in the narration.
An orc whose Brute Stat is “injured” does not necessarily become physically hurt. The reduced die may be explained as the orc being winded, an item being lifted being heavier than was anticipated, the opponent being stronger than he was, or simply the whims of fate and chance interfering with the orc’s success. It might even be causative (explained as a pre-existing problem) rather consequence: your orc was sick, he had a headache, his credit’s no good in these parts, he’s felt sore all week and thinks he’s coming down with the plague, etc.
Three-fingers, our orc hero, is trying to convince Thraak, a peon guard, to let him through the gate into the Black Fortress. Three-fingers’ player chooses to use his Nasty to try and convince Thraak to let him do just that. Three-finger’s Nasty is a d10 and the gamemaster picks a d10 to oppose him with.
Unfortunately, Three-fingers fails the roll…so, he’s not getting in the gate that easily. Not only that, but Three-fingers’ Nasty just went down to d8 until the end of the Scene. He just isn’t getting any respect.
Three-fingers’ could try to convince the guard again, hoping to win the roll this time by rolling his Nasty again, now at d8. Or he could try a different tactic, using Brute instead (also at d8), seamlessly using the failed roll to persuade the guard as a springboard for pummeling the son-of-a-bitch into agreement.
Zeroing
If Injuries would drop a Stat to 0, the orc simply cannot use it until the next Scene. “Zero” is the die size right below d4, you can’t go lower than 0, and you can’t roll a “Zeroed” Stat.
When an orc Zeroes a Stat he has to survive a Fate roll by the gamemaster or he dies. Whether he is mobbed and beaten, chokes on a chicken bone, is gutted by a dwarven axe or brained by a lusty wench is all up to the whims of play and the current situation. For the Fate roll the gamemaster must use the largest sized die in the Fate pool; the orc dies if the roll is under the orc’s total number of Fate points, minus the orc’s Loot. If the orc survives the Fate roll, he gains a point of Loot at the end of the session.
If an orc begins any Scene with a Zeroed Stat the gamemaster immediately makes a Fate roll before anything else is done. If ever all an orc’s Stats are Zeroed, the orc dies immediately, no Fate roll required.
Note that if there are no dice in the Fate pool, the gamemaster cannot make a Fate roll. The orc can’t die, but also can’t gain Loot (no roll occurred).
Curses
If your orc has any unspent Fate points at the time of his demise, the gamemaster receives an equal number of Curses. Each Curse can be used to force a player (any player) to roll a specific Stat die rather than choosing the one they wish to roll. The gamemaster cannot disallow rolling Descriptors, borrowing Fate, or otherwise adding to or modifying the roll with a Curse. The gamemaster also gets to keep Curses between sessions and they never go away until he uses them.
For example, Nathan’s weakling, wise-cracking orc is running across a chamber collapsing in on itself, trying to dodge falling rubble make it to the exit before being buried beneath a large mountain. The gamemaster declares a Conflict, and reveals he is rolling a d10 Scene die. He also declares he is using a Curse he gained earlier in the game.
Normally, Nathan rolls his orc’s Grok, at d12, but the gamemaster states the Curse means Nathan must roll his Brute Stat, at d4, instead…poor Bark, things look pretty grim for him right now.
A Crippling Blow
A Crippling Loss is an Injury that occurs when a “1″ is rolled on any of the dice you roll for your orc. You immediately reduce the Stat by one die size until the session ends or until the orc gets some sort of mojo to bring the Stat back up (usually by spending a point of Fate).
Nathan’s orc, Bark, is trapped in a cavern rapidly filling with water, and Nathan rolls his d10 Brute against the gamemaster’s d20. Fearing this is not going to do it, Nathan borrows a d20 Fate die from the game master’s Fate pool and adds a point of Fate to Bark.
The gamemaster rolls a 12, and Nathan rolls a 5 and a 1. Not only is Bark’s Brute reduced to d8, but it is stuck at d8 for the rest of the game!
Note that if a Stat is Zeroed by a series of Crippling Losses, the orc takes a permanent reduction of one die size to that Stat, and the Stat remains at 0 until the end of the session unless healed up with Fate.
Pacing Yourself
A value of “1″ for Crippling Losses makes for long games, on the scale of “sessions and sessions” — campaign-length play. The pace and mood of the game can be controlled by increasing the range of values for a Crippling Loss. If you want a quicker, more brutal game — just a couple sessions or even just one short session — increase the threshold so that they occur whenever a player rolls lower than some other specific number.
3-or-less is recommended for a nice solid spread that should up the tension in play; but 5-or-less is acceptable if you’re going for complete carnage. Raising the threshold above “5″ means the orcs start taking Crippling Losses for pretty much everything they do, succeed or fail, and d4 is completely useless as a die-size, because the orc takes a Crippling Loss by default, succeed or fail.
Getting Better
Note that Injured Stats heal up to their full value at the start of a Scene, unless the injury was a Crippling Loss, in which case it stays at the reduced value until the start of the next session. Or if a Stat Zeroes in a Scene, it only heals up to one die size below its normal size in the next Scene, returning to its regular value in the Scene following that one.
If the orc somehow Zeroes a Strained Stat again the following Scene, the Stat heals to only two die sizes below its normal size at the end of that Scene, but heals fully in the Scene following. And so forth.
Such a “partially healed” Stat is known as a Strained Stat.
A Stat cannot heal to 0 or less, a Zeroed Stat always heals up to a d4 minimum in the following Scene, ignoring the above rules about the reduced value of Strained Stats, unless the orc dies.
Note that a Stat that is Injured or Zeroed by a Crippling Blow does not heal up until the start of the next session, and ignores the above rules about Strain.
The Vanishing Die Trick
Scene dice do not suffer Injuries or Crippling Losses like orcs do. They cannot “heal” either. A Scene element either succeeds at keeping the orcs from progressing in their intended direction, or fails to do so, and the orcs overcome it and move on. Once rolled by the gamemaster, a die is removed from play — win or lose.
Re-rolling the Bones
A player may wish to gain extra rolls by use of one or more of his Descriptors; you can use as many Descriptors as you like at the same time to gain multiple extra rolls, however each Descriptor can be used only once per Scene.
A player may also, once per Scene a player can borrow as many Fate dice from the gamemaster’s “Fate pool” as they desire and roll them with the Stat die for a Conflict. Dice borrowed from the Fate pool by players are returned to it and not removed from the game.
Rolling more dice is always a gamble, because you must choose to use them before you roll the first die. You cannot choose to add more dice after the fact just because you lost the roll.
Tharg is trying to move a very large boulder using his Brute. Oddly, for an orc, he has an “Engineer” Descriptor, and his player chooses to apply it to this roll, gaining an extra Brute die to roll.
However, he really wants to move that boulder, so his player tosses the use of another Descriptor into the mix — a temporary Descriptor purchased with Loot, described as “Widgets.” This means the player rolls Tharg’s Brute three times and takes the highest roll.
Double Your Pleasure
When rolling two (or more) dice, Crippling Losses happen even if the orc is successful in the roll. That means Crippling Losses, though they cause Injury, are not necessarily failures.
Bark rolls his Grok die at d10, uses one of his Descriptors for a second roll of his Stat die, and borrows a d8 Fate die, hoping one of the rolls will meet or beat the result of the d12 the gamemaster is rolling.
The gamemaster rolls a “5″ while Bark rolls a “3″ on the Fate die, and a “6″ on his Stat die; Nathan wins, but still must roll Grok once more. Unluckily enough, he rolls a “1″…he doesn’t lose the Conflict, but now Bark’s Grok is reduced to d8 until the end of the session.
The same is true in the reverse situation, if the first roll is a “1″ and the reroll is a “6″ or higher!
Adding Complication
Each player can declare one Complication against another player’s orc per Scene, which must be included in narration as a problem specific to the situation having arisen — such as an orc warrior’s spear breaking in combat. A Complication must be declared when a Conflict is declared, before the player makes his choice of Stat and such.
Mechanically, a Complication forces the affected player to take his lowest roll as his result instead of his highest roll; they cannot be called against players rolling only one Stat die.
Frex, Bark and Tharg are fighting a horde of pesky half-men. When Nathan tells the gamemaster that Bark is trying to drive the half-men off using his Grok, Bob interrupts and declares a Complication to Nathan’s roll.
Nathan would have been rolling Bark’s Grok, a d12, and borrowed a d10 from the Fate pool, but now he has to take the lowest roll between them. The gamemaster chooses a d8 to oppose him and rolls a 4. Nathan rolls 3 and 10 — since he has to take the lowest roll, the poor bastard loses the Conflict.
Bob describes how Tharg is whirling his huge axe around and manages to crack the skull of Bark without realizing it. Nathan describes how his orc’s attempt to stab and slice the horde of half-men with his broken spear are put to an early rest by the axe-blow, which knocks Bark’s senses out of whack for a moment.
The player of the orc who adds the Complication gets to increase any one of their orc’s Stats by one die-size for the next roll they make, whether it is during that Scene or later (but d20 is the maximum die size allowed) — but note Injury done to a Stat boosted in this manner comes off the Stat’s normal size, not the increased size.
You cannot stack or hoard Stat increases from declaring Complications. You can, of course, continue to declare Complications while holding onto an unused Stat increase, but you receive no additional Stat increases for doing so: the die-size boost must be used with your next roll before you can gain another.
A larger benefit is that every time an orc goes through a Scene and suffers from a Complication, the gamemaster is prevented from adding a die to his Fate pool for that orc.
As an example, if Bob, Mike, and Nathan are playing and none of their orcs end up with Complications, the GM gets one Fate die per orc for a total of three Fate dice, as usual; if Mike’s orc is given a Complication the GM gets two Fate dice (for Bob and Nathan’s orcs), and so forth and so on.
This Is Getting Really Complicated
Using a Descriptor cancels a Complication instead of giving the player an extra roll. Using a Descriptor to cancel a Complication means that ultimately no Complication was added to the task and:
-x- the player has lost his use of that Descriptor for the remainder of the Scene, as it was utilized
-x-the player does not roll an extra die for the Descriptor since it was “used up” to avoid the Complication
-x-the Complication is negated and does not prevent the gamemaster getting a Fate die due that orc
-x-the player adding the Complication does not get to increase their next roll by a die size and has used up their ability to declare a Complication for the Scene!
Since the player may add any additional dice to his roll before he rolls, and since Complications are declared before the orc rolls, the player can declare its use as a response to the addition of a Complication. This is useful in situations where the player does not want to increase the chance of their orc failing.
Even More Complicated
In the case of a second Complication being added to a situation by a different player after the first Complication has been cancelled out, the second Complication sticks: it cannot also be cancelled out by the use of another Descriptor, and all benefits and banes of a Complication apply.
Permanently Complicated
A Crippling Loss that occurs when a roll has been Complicated by another player is even more destructive than a standard Crippling Loss; if an orc suffers a Crippling Loss when under the burden of a Complication, the player must choose one of their orc’s Descriptors and remove it permanently (unless they are willing to spend the Fate to restore it).
The removed Descriptor does not necessarily entail the destruction, loss, or forgetting of the skill, item, or whatever it is the Descriptor references; it merely means the player no longer receives a bonus roll from that thing.
Tharg has a Descriptor of “Massive, Heavy Armor.” During a Conflict, one of the other players declares a Complication against Tharg in order to score a die-size boost to his own orc’s next Stat roll.
Unfortunately for Tharg, his player rolls a “1″ and in addition to suffering from a Crippled Stat, Tharg loses the armor as a Descriptor. Whether or not the player narrates the Complication as severe damage or destruction of the armor is up to him.
Mob Rule!
Orcs can choose to work together: players can decide at the start of a Conflict if they wish to pool resources to help out their tribemate(s).
When a Conflict is declared against a specific player, other players can lend their support to that player’s orc and participate in the Conflict as well. Each additional player involved in the Conflict grants the rolling player a temporary one die increase in the size of the die rolled (with a maximum size of d20).
Once all the participants have declared their intention to help, the die-size increases are added to the participating orc with the lowest Stat (Stat chosen by the player the Conflict was declared against) and his player rolls. Even if the die being rolled is maxed at d20 or there is no die-size increase, each additional participant may also contribute Descriptors and Fate dice to the roll.
Tharg and Three-fingers are trying to defeat the ancient demon-guardian of the chest. The gamemaster has decided to go all out on this Conflict, and devoted the three d20′s in his die-pool to this effort as part of this scenario’s climax.
Mike and Bob decide to pool their resources to defeat the demon, and have Tharg roll his Brute to overcome the demon. Three-fingers’ Brute Stat is lowest (d8) which Tharg’s participation increases by one size to d10. Mike pitches in a bonus Stat roll with Three-fingers’ “Bone Rattle” Descriptor, and Bob puts in another bonus roll using one of Tharg’s Descriptors.
Though working together provides obvious benefits to the orcs in the form of a greater chance of success, failure can make a mess of things. Should the roll fail, all the orcs involved in the Conflict suffer Injury; should the roll result in a Crippling Loss, each orc involved in the Conflict suffers a Crippling Loss to the rolled Stat.
In the example above, if Bob fails to roll higher than the gamemaster, both Tharg and Three-fingers’ Brute Stats are injured one die size (Tharg to d8, and Three-fingers to d6).
Finally, should a Complication be added to the roll, the roll suffers under its burden as usual, with the lowest result used rather than the highest. However, the gamemaster cannot gain Fate dice that Scene from any of the orcs involved, since all those orcs suffered from a Complication.
Part Three: Fight Clubbing
Starting Your Own Fight Club
There are two systems involved in the play of Orx that must be understood: the mechanics and the narration.
The mechanics are resolved before any declarations of “what occurs” or “what my orc did” come up. These are detailed in the previous section.
Once the mechanical outcome of a Conflict is known, the players construct a narrative to explain the results of the rolls and the choices of Stats, Descriptors, and Complications.
Not Usually a Gamblin’ Orc…
If you examine the structure of the game, you’ll realize that Orx can be run as just a dice game. This is intentional. The basic dice game serves as the structure of play and the model into which the narration of adventures is inserted. It may, in fact, be simplest to run the game at first with just the dice in order to get a feel for the way the mechanics work, to see how Conflicts and Scenes are mechanically structured and just ignore the narrative portion of play.
Overview of a Conflict
The gamemaster initiates a Conflict in a Scene by choosing a Scene or Fate die to roll, perhaps detailing the occurrence of events to which an orc(s) must respond. In this case, the gamemaster must show and roll the die or dice he is using before those involved in the Conflict declare which Stat die (and etc.) they will respond with.
A player can also initiate a Conflict in a Scene by choosing a Stat die (and etc.) to roll, showing it/them to everyone, and perhaps announcing some sort of general intention or goal they’re going to attempt to reach. The gamemaster/opposition responds by choosing a Scene or Fate die (and etc.) to roll in opposition.
Declaring the Conflict means you control how many dice of what size you will initially play. But you can’t declare a Conflict if the individual has no dice to respond with!
The mechanics of a Conflict are then fairly straightforward: the two individuals roll their dice and then compare the results of their rolls to determine the winner, with the highest roll winning.
Players always narrate the outcome. In the case of a Conflict between two players, the winner of the roll narrates.
Establishing the Pecking Order
The gamemaster always has the option to declare Conflicts first in a Scene, and to declare a new Conflict after a Conflict he initiated has been resolved. If he does not wish to initiate a Conflict the gamemaster must state he is passing the opportunity. If the gamemaster initiates multiple Conflicts against one or more orcs during his turn they must be resolved first; control only passing to the players after he has declared he is finished.
Once the gamemaster passes his turn to initiate a Conflict, any player(s) can choose to initiate a new Conflict with the gamemaster or another player, or pass. If multiple players choose to initiate Conflicts during their turn, all of those Conflicts must be resolved (separately) before control passes back to the gamemaster.
All players must agree that their turn is over for control to pass back to the gamemaster. If a player decides to initiate a Conflict during their turn, even if they chose to pass initially, then that Conflict must occur before the gamemaster can declare any Conflicts.
Once Conflicts begun by the players are resolved, the ball is back in the gamemaster’s court to either use or pass again, then back to the players…and so on and so forth taking turns until the gamemaster has no dice left with which to create Conflicts and the players pass. Note that if the gamemaster has no dice left, the players only can initiate Conflicts between their orcs, not with the gamemaster.
The gamemaster must begin a Conflict if he has any Scene dice left and all of the players have passed on their turn. The gamemaster can also continue a Scene using Fate dice; spending all the Scene dice does not automatically end the Scene.
Once the gamemaster runs out of Scene dice and chooses not to spend any (more) Fate dice, and the players choose not to roll against each other, the Scene has ended and the game moves on to a new Scene.
The Fastest Gun in Mordor
Normally all Conflicts are resolved in order. When the gamemaster declares Conflicts against the orcs, the players roll and narrate according to the order in which the gamemaster presented the Conflicts to them. When the players declare Conflicts, they roll and narrate according to the order in which they presented their Conflicts.
This applies even when multiple Conflicts might be declared and argued to be occurring all at once, rather than one after another. Only one Conflict is resolved at a time in order to keep play simple and running smoothly.
However, since players might argue over who goes first because of the mechanical consequences, or because having your Conflict occur “first” might be important in the narrative, if one orc wishes to act before another, the rule is that their player must declare they want to “go first” before the other player rolls for his Conflict. You cannot declare you want to act first after someone has already rolled for their Conflict.
If the other player disagrees, the player who wishes to act before them can make a roll against the other player to determine whose Conflict is resolved first, which is treated like any other Conflict roll (choose a Stat, Injury, etc).
Piling On The Pain
Even though it is best for a player not to get involved in multiple Conflicts, the player’s luck in this regard is wholly up to the gamemaster in how and where the latter chooses to spend his dice to create Conflicts.
The gamemaster also has good reason to pick on just one orc at a time: it makes creating Complications more difficult for the other players, and forces them to create Conflicts among themselves to make that happen if they don’t want the gamemaster to get any more Fate dice.
Getting Screwed Together
Though the gamemaster might wish to affect groups of orcs at the same time with the same Conflict in order to save dice, he can’t. The rule is that a Conflict roll is between the gamemaster’s roll and the roll of one player. The rule is that a Conflict roll is between the gamemaster’s roll and the roll of one player.
Bark is busy prying the lock off an ancient chest while Tharg battles the horrendous demon-thing guarding the ancient chest from exactly such defilement. Each orc is engaged in a separate Conflict.
If Bark continues to busy himself prying the lock off the chest, and Tharg is still busy battling the demon-thing, but is joined by Three-fingers in fighting the beast, all three orcs are engaged in separate Conflicts, even though two orcs are confronting the demon-thing together.
Despite Tharg and Three-fingers both facing the same exact situation, what happens to each orc is a separate matter…unless they activate their Wonder Twins powers or something.
Conflicts, because they define an instance of two people at the table rolling against one another, only affect one orc at a time, even when the gamemaster describes the die chosen for a Conflict as the same situation or Scene element another orc is confronting.
This means rolling for a Conflict does not necessarily indicate a separate situation is affecting each orc; rather, it indicates separate outcomes and danger levels are affecting each orc. So when the gamemaster desires to affect a number of orcs with a single event, he must roll against each orc with a different die, as though each orc affected is engaged in a separate Conflict.
Example: The gamemaster has created a fire sorcerer as part of a force of orc-hunters. In battle with this group, the sorcerer creates an explosive fireball in an attempt to wipe out all the orcs.
If there are three orcs, the gamemaster must spend three dice to affect them all. The gamemaster has a d6, d8, and d10 for Scene dice and three d20′s in his Fate pool; he chooses to spend a d10 against one orc, a d8 against another, and two d20′s against the third (whom he really wants to get!). This leaves him with a d20 and a d10 after all the rolling is finished.
Complicated Timing
The moment the gamemaster or another player declares a Conflict against an orc, any other player may declare a Complication against that orc in order to boost their own next roll, assuming they have not yet done so to another orc this Scene.
To keep things running smoothly, the gamemaster should probably just ask if anyone else wishes to Complicate the roll (the players might also wish to just keep this phase of Conflict resolution in mind).
Some sort of token to recall that you put a Complication on another orc can be used in play, so the other player doesn’t forget, and you don’t either (for your Stat-size bonus to a later roll). A red or green glass bead works well for this, or small candies, which have the added benefit of being edible if the Complication doesn’t stick.
Picking Your Dice
Unless Cursed by the gamemaster, players are allowed to choose the Stat die they will be using when responding to Conflicts against them. Declaring you are borrowing Fate dice or using Descriptors must happen at the same time, before the dice are rolled. Players can’t use a Descriptor or grab Fate dice after they have already rolled. And the player may only utilize each option once during a given Scene (ie: utilize a specific Descriptor or borrow Fate).
For example, if Nathan used a specific Descriptor with his last roll in order to garner bonus dice for that roll (or in order to cancel a Complication), he may not use that specific Descriptor again this Scene (though he could use a different Descriptor, assuming it has not been used yet).
When the gamemaster chooses the die he will roll in the Conflict, he may choose either a Scene die or a Fate die as the initial die; if he so desires he may also draw any number of extra Scene dice to roll as well and/or additional Fate dice from the Fate Pool.
Unlike the players, the gamemaster can draw more Fate dice from the Fate pool at any time for use with his roll — either before or after the roll has been made. Also unlike players, the gamemaster is not limited to using Fate dice once per Scene.
Engaging in Conflict
Once the Conflict has been set and dice (and perhaps sides) have been chosen, the involved parties roll all their dice at once. The gamemaster takes the result of his highest rolling die, as does anyone not affected by a Complication. Those affected by a Complication must take the result of their lowest rolling die. The results are compared, and the individual with the higher number is declared the winner of the Conflict.
Following the Conflict, if the orc lost the roll, the Stat he used is marked down one die size. If an orc zeroes, Fate checks are rolled by the gamemaster to see if the orc is removed from play. If the orc’s player rolled a “1″ on any die, he suffers a Crippling Loss. If the Crippling Loss was on a Complicated roll, the player removes one of his orc’s Descriptors.
Starting & Ending the Scene
After the Scene ends, the gamemaster receives a number of new Scene dice and gains Fate dice in his Fate pool equal to the highest Stat of each orc who went through the Scene without suffering a Complication.
Players then remove any injuries done to their orc’s Stats, returning them to their full value and the next Scene begins, unless that injury was a Crippling Loss, in which case the injury does not heal up.
If any orc Zeroed during the scene, and survived the ensuing Fate roll, the zeroed Stat heals back up to one die-size smaller than its actual size until the next Scene. If that Stat was also zeroed in the previous Scene, it heals up to two die-sizes smaller than its actual size until the next Scene. Etc.
Scene changes are then described by the gamemaster and he sets the Scene and any potential Conflicts by describing the location and any other relevant information about the current site and situation to the players.
Boasting And Bragging
“Narration” is the portion of the game that requires the most work to understand by long-time role-players who may be used to taking the lead from the gamemaster or being told what is in a Scene and what they can do or declare in a Scene. This is because the Narration phase is precisely the opposite of how, when, and why narration occurs in most games.
In most RPGs, narration is usually the part of play that happens before the dice roll(s) have been made and resolved. Traditionally, narration is the place where you get to say what your orc is doing, what he said, or so forth; what happens to him after the roll is then detailed by the gamemaster.
In Orx, this pattern is reversed: the die rolls serve as a framework upon which the player can hang a description of events that occurred; the decision of what to do — what the orc was actually attempting to do, what he said, what he did, etc. — is only made after knowing whether the orc succeeded or failed.
Deciding what events occurred when narrating your Conflict might seem tricky at first, but the best method to help you describe results is by basing your Narration around an important, immediate goal that we call “the Stakes.”
Scaling Conflicts
Before we discuss the Stakes, however, there is another very important concept to discuss: the Scale of Narration. When narrating the results of a roll, or even thinking about “what action the Conflict roll represents” the player does not need to commit himself to a single action or task.
How long the narration covers, how many actions it encompasses, and how many variables are at work are not set in stone when the player narrates his victory or defeat. This breadth of possibilities creates the Scale of the Conflict, and any or all of the above items in any degree may comprise the Scale of the Narration. Conflicts are events that explain the success or failure regarding the Stakes, and a given Conflict roll is not necessarily representative of only a single action being tested in pursuit of the Stakes. Conflicts may (and often do) include multiple actions and events. Whatever it takes to get to the goal (or not) is whatever it takes.
Look at it this way: a Conflict is the striving towards a short-term goal rather than the performance of an action. That short-term goal is…the Stakes. Because a Conflict is not a specific action or attempt, it may include as much or as little action as the player decides during his narration.
For example, an orc might face a whole army in some mad attempt to crush and scatter them, but the player may have only rolled once to decide the outcome of all the individual battles that took place in that attempt, rather than once for each individual battle with each opposing warrior.
As such, the Scale of a particular Conflict is ultimately up to the individual narrating the outcome, as it is up to him to decide how many hoops his orc jumps through to achieve victory or fall in defeat, though the possible choices of Scale will be affected by the current Stakes, as well as what the gamemaster’s die represents.
Scale may seem confusing, since you may be thinking, “You are talking about resolving a whole situation with one roll.” Not necessarily. The key to the Scale of a Conflict is the Stakes of a roll, and the Stakes are what a Conflict is about right now. “Right now” are the key words. Just ask: what are you doing right now and why?
Making Stakes
Understanding Stakes relies, in part, on learning the distinction between tasks and conflicts.
In many role-playing games, rolls are made to determine the results of a specific action or task. The success of the action itself is at stake: do you sneak past the slumbering ogre? Do you pick the lock on the chest? Do you stab the ugly little goblin with your spear? What’s “at stake” in these rolls are whether you sneak past the ogre, pick the lock, or stab the goblin.
The Stakes in Orx, however, deal with the reasons for undertaking the task in the first place — the immediate goal the task is performed in service to. When a player rolls to resolve a conflict, the roll is really asking: Do you sneak past the ogre to get into the cave it is guarding? Do you pick the lock on the chest to get the prince’s heirloom? Do you stab the goblin to drive him away?
Task resolution is all about success and failure. Conflict resolution is about winning or losing. With task resolution, you can succeed but lose, fail but win. With conflict resolution, you know whether or not your success translates into a real success (ie: accomplishing what you wanted to happen).
Just ask yourself which is important to the resolution: hitting the goblin with your sword or driving him off? That is how you tell the difference between task resolution and conflict resolution, because task resolution doesn’t tell you whether or not you’ve succeeded at your goal — in task resolution, whether or not the goblin runs off has nothing to do with a successful roll to hit him on your part.
So, in order to understand “what’s at Stake” just ask yourself what the orc is trying to accomplish, regardless of the task he might perform to get there. In the examples above, what’s “at Stake” is whether or not you get into the cave, whether you get the heirloom, or whether you drive off the goblin — that is what is really important, not whether the action itself succeeds.
In play, what the Stakes are often hinge upon the description of the Scene and its potential Conflicts. This does not necessarily mean the gamemaster gets to say what the Stakes are, only that he usually provides them with their context by describing the nature of the Scene. So this is usually decided by the player according to what the orc is ultimately attempting to accomplish in the face of whatever obstacles the gamemaster has just described.
One last note: sometimes the task is the conflict.
Setting Authority
You might be wondering what, exactly, the Stakes let you decide? Can you decide where things are in the gameworld? Add people and objects? Countries, even? Replete with feudal princes and emerging capitalist economies breeding cultural dissent and ushering in economic rebellion across the face of the land…all right there in play?
In most games, that part of play is the gamemster’s job. He describes and populates the game’s setting, decides what mysteries exist and how to solve them, adds dangers and treasures and wonders, determines how the other characters and creatures in the world react, and so forth. He has authority over these subjects.
In this game, players get to do all the same things during their narration. For best results, narrate about only those things currently affected by or affecting the Stakes in question, and remember the addition or description of anything new must not contradict any element of the setting so far revealed in play.
Meaning that when the gamemaster describes the dragon you’re facing as an angry, bitter, fearless monstrosity that eats orcs for breakfast, you can’t turn around and say it is a loving, hippy, vegetarian with a crippling stomach-ache. Except that…
…the clever reader may also have noticed this may mean upsetting the gamemaster’s or another player’s “plans” for some element of the game, since the other players will go places never intended with those elements: That’s part of play. Learn to negotiate at the table. So the dragon might have a crippling stomach ache, which is why it is angry and bitter, but is really usually a loving hippy.
Ultimately, each group is going to have to determine through play where their comfort-boundaries are regarding who has authority over their shared game world, and how much authority is acceptable. One helpful suggestion is to create a “setting bible” prior to play, describing any elements desired in play as imagined.
Expect the players to go crazy with this power the first few times. This is natural, normal and healthy: players will want to test the limits of their power and seek out the boundaries until they settle back into a more comfortable and less wild-eyed abuse of their newfound authority. Just run with it until they get bored with it and you can play more sensible, mature games.
Implementing the Stake
So, how do you effectively and meaningfully implement “what’s at stake” in play? Find yourself some “magic words.” I don’t know what your group’s magic words will be, but here are some real examples you can try out:
-x- “The danger is that…”
-x-”What’s at stake is…”
-x-”What you’re risking is…”
-x-”So what you hope to accomplish is…”
The trick is to generalize, not specify: “Overall, what am I trying to accomplish here?” Keeping in mind how much authority you have to describe the Scene’s elements. If you are answering only how rather than why, you need to restate it. Or if your answer, bereft of context, means someone would have to ask you “Why are you doing that?” You should restate it. Ex: I want to break into the safe. Why? To see if the heirloom is in there.
At first, the gamemaster may need to finish off the sentence for the players, like this:
-x-”The danger is that…you’ll set off the trap instead of disarming it.”
-x-”What’s at stake is…do you make it to the ferry in time or do you have to go the long way around?”
-x-”What you’re risking is…being overheard by the goblins on the rooftop.”
-x-”So what you hope to accomplish is…to get through the doorway, whether this ogre lives or dies.”
But after the gamemaster has said it three or four or ten times, he should be able to trail off with a question mark and the players should pick right up with their input. Say these “magic words” when the dice are in the hands of the players, and soon your players will be creating Stakes.
Succeeding to Fail
Another thing to remember about Stakes is that whether or not some task succeeds is secondary to the Stakes. It is immaterial whether or not the orc actually succeeds at a task he is undertaking! Whether or not he sneaks quietly, opens the chest, or stabs the goblin, even if he fails, he succeeds in gaining the Stakes.
Since “what’s at Stake” in a roll is not the task, you could fail the roll to sneak past the ogre, awakening him instead, and still succeed at getting into the cave (of course, that could mean there’s an angry — or hungry — ogre on your tail!).
This is really up to the player in question if what’s at stake is “making it into the cave” and he doesn’t care whether or not the gamemaster gets to use a wakened ogre against him at some point. If “not waking the ogre” is what’s at stake, however, then roll for it, and let the slumbering beast lie. This is how Complications can be used in narration: you might succeed at your task, but now things are a little more difficult.
So, the orc wakes the ogre while (loudly) trying to sneak into the cave…but he trips the ogre and knocks him unconscious, opening the way into the cave. The orc can’t open the chest for some reason…but wait, there’s the heirloom hidden amid some junk on the desk nearby. The orc doesn’t stab the goblin…but the little sucker decides he doesn’t want to tempt fate at the hands of an enraged orc and flees.
This works in reverse, as well…where the orc may well succeed at his action, but fail to gain the Stakes. He is as silent as a deadly fart, but there’s a big rock behind the ogre blocking the cave entry. He springs the lock on the chest, but can’t find the heirloom! Curses! He stabs the goblin, but his “high-quality” orcish blade snaps off in the enraged little goober’s shield!
Stakes and Consequences
If the player succeeds at the roll, they win the Stakes. They accomplish their goal or they avoid the danger and put it behind them. If the player fails the roll, they lose the Stakes, and the gamemaster must immediately introduce something new at Stake, in addition to the original Stake. It might be another chance, it might be a consequence, but what matters is that it is more serious than the last Stake.
“The goblins overhear you and start dropping in through the hole in the cavern ceiling. They scramble all over you, biting and screeching. The danger is that they’ll knock you off your feet (and probably put you in the stewpot — goblins eat anything)!”
“Not only does the ogre keep you away from the doorway, but now it is pushing you back toward the chasm. The danger is that it will knock you back into the chasm. It does! You manage to grab a tree branch sticking out from the cliff to save yourself, but the danger is you will fall!”
Stakes should keep the story moving forward; resolving them should never result in an impasse or static situation. So, if the fire-demon doesn’t kill you, he captures you. Or, if the explosion doesn’t kill you, you end up lost in the sewers. Or whatever.
Remember, the Stakes can never be “or you’ll die.” Orcs don’t die unless they Zero and then succumb to Fate. Because of this you’ll have to be creative, and if the gamemaster wants to kill the orcs, he has to worry them down to nothing and THEN kill them with a successful Fate roll!
If a Scene ends with the orc in some catastrophic event, just continue it in the next Scene, advance time a little, move the location a bit, create new Stakes, and he’s probably further from his original goal than he was before.
“The danger is that you’ll set off the trap…and you do! A dart thocks into your shoulder; the danger now is that you’ll succumb to its poison! And you do! The danger is that something is going to eat you while you’re lying there unconscious.”
“The danger is that you’ll miss the raft…and you do. You reach the dock as the raft is pulling away. Do you want to jump for it? The danger is that you’ll fall in the river…and you do! Do you want to try to swim for the raft? The danger is that you’ll be pulled under by the currents.”
How do you handle “deadly” Stakes when an orc isn’t Zeroed? Take cues from action-oriented television and cartoon shows if you’re having problems here, because in those shows, the heroes never end up dead, something else just gets in the way. Most of the moment-to-moment Stakes are not about life-or-death or about survival.
Say, “You sat down in a deadly man-eating plant.” The Stakes are not “Do I survive?” (illegal) or “Do I escape?” (static) but “What do I do?” or “What cool thing happens here that shows off my orc, for better or worse?”
A Few Points
Narration can still be a tricky thing to handle, however, so here are some tips.
The first tip is that one of the best ways to “get into” narration is to talk in first person, describing the Scene as though it is your orc telling the tale of the moment.
Bob narrates, “Me, Tharg, scrambled across the stupid shifty floor, lookin’ to grab up that glitterin’ Loot in the chest. The fire god weren’t too happy with me stealin’ his treasure, though, and wouldn’t let me near it…shook the whole mountain and knocked me down! Tried to burn me up, even, but me rolled away too quick!”
Second, keep in mind that much of what occurs during Narration depends on the Mood of the game; what a failure or success highlights or brings into the Narrative in a Heroic Mood is going to differ from what happens in a Comedic Mood. Keep the Mood goal in mind when narrating.
Finally, the dice rolled provide a good, basic definition for the forthcoming narrative, because they not only tell you what sort of contest your orc is engaged in, and its relative difficulty, but whether you’ve succeeded or failed at the attempt, all without telling you how or why. That is the part you get to add.
A player making a Nasty roll knows some sort of social event/conflict has occurred: it is now up to the player to describe what that event was and its exact outcome. Was it a terse word with the guards at the gate, or a discussion of which fork in the trail to take? Did the guardsman’s surly attitude put the character off for the rest of the day? Did the character feel ignored and belittled by the others even though they chose the branch of the trail he demanded?
The How and Why
When thinking about the how and the why of your orc’s success or failure, start off by noting what the Stakes are for the roll you made: what your orc hoped to accomplish right then and there (sneaking away, killing the attacking knight, not pissing himself, etc).
Note that the gamemaster can provide a description of what his die represents, and that the exact nature of the situation your narrative will have to abide within has already been formed. This means less creative freedom for you, but a more definitive box in which to work your own ideas.
Next, keep in mind what Stat you rolled and whether you succeeded or failed at the die roll. The Stat utilized by the orc forms the basis of the orc’s behavior in the narration, as the choices and overall tactics or strategy he uses in attempting to achieve the Stakes are appropriate to the Stat rolled.
If the orcs are using their Nasty in a mass combat against a horde of human knights, they may not do much damage pushing through their opponent’s ranks, but they succeed in resolving the conflict (to their benefit) with sheer piss-and-vinegar willpower. Should the orcs use Brute for the situation instead, they might lay about like savages, leaving heaps of dead and dying men behind them.
Finally, remember to include any other details that were indicated by game elements, such as Complications or the nature of the opposing die (if the gamemaster set the specifics of the situation/event being faced: a dragon’s breath, a sturdy oak door, a puzzle, etc).
Actually Narrating
All the above details serve to flesh out a big part of the narrative for you, so with those in mind, you will have a very good basic framework of what you are going to describe having occurred in that Conflict. You should have a slew of ideas regarding the events of the Conflict, or at least one good idea at any rate.
Using the Stat you rolled as the basic action undertaken (ie: Brute = physical force; Nasty = intimidation or command; Grok = cleverness or willpower), describe how you achieved your success or failure with it relative to the Stakes and the Conflict at hand.
Extending the previous example, Mike describes his orc, Tharg, as rushing across the collapsing room attempting to reach the treasure chest they were seeking. He describes his orc’s failure as an inability to stay on his feet in the quaking room, leaving him on his knees, surrounded by surging flames leaping from chasms in the ground. In this case, the gamemaster’s dice represented the quakes tearing the mountain apart.
Included in this is a description of any Complications that might have occurred, usually consisting of a brief series of goofs and interferences similar to a slapstick comedy routine. You must also remember to include any Descriptors that were used with the roll (big sword, nose picking, great tracker, etc).
Note that Descriptor(s) and Complication(s) must be included in the narration or a special narration phase rule takes effect: forgetting to utilize a narrative element causes the player’s orc suffer an injury to the Stat used in the roll being described, exactly as if the player had failed the roll.
Blah Blah Blah
As might be obvious, you are going to really have to flex your story-telling muscles during the Narration phase because you will be making much of the story up as you go along. You may not be used to doing this sort of description of the action or detailing of the details (even if you have played those other “storytelling” games), but you will get better with time.
So, even if you feel like a fool and put on the spot when it is your turn, and you wimp out and say something lame like “Unh, I swing my sword at him, and he falls down and goes, ‘ugh’…or something.” don’t worry about it.
Remember, practice makes perfect, and no one ever does it right all the time (or even most of the time). Just be cool and enjoy yourself, and others will, too. The gamemaster will just have to keep up with whatever you throw into the mix — that’s his job to worry about, not yours. But you can help if you want.
First Things Last
Scenarios in Orx don’t start off with a bunch of orcs sitting around in a bar — unless there’s a bar fight going on! Often, scenarios start out in media res: meaning, in the middle of the action.
So, to get there and kick all these wonderful Conflict-filled Scenes off, stuff needs to have happened. Sometimes that stuff will be outside the orcs’ influence, the result of orders or events higher up in the chain of command; other times the trouble the orcs get themselves into is entirely their own fault and maybe their own idea (if you can suspend your disbelief for a moment!).
Raiding a human village? Captured by enemy forces? Trying to wrest control of the tribe from the orc-king? Being “enlisted” by the Dark Master’s goons? Bringing the dragon its tribute? Sneaking back into bed with the wife after an ill-spent night of drinking and carousing?
To simulate this, starting a game of Orx consists of everyone rolling against everyone else, including the gamemaster. Relevant Descriptors can be used for more dice. The winner of this roll decides what the orcs are up to. But if that doesn’t work, you can all roll dice on the following random adventure charts (not included in this product) to create a nasty situation for your orcs to deal with!
As with any other Conflict roll started by a player, the gamemaster has to fly with it, and the GM must build the opening scene around the idea presented.
Conclusion
Get To It!
start running
Well, you have the rules…now go play!
You can also get advice on playing or join in discussion of Orx, as well as the independent press movement, game theory, and cutting-edge game design, on the Forge website, located at: http://www.indie-rpgs.com
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copyright (c)2005, 2010 Raven Daegmorgan
(codename: v.A.ni11a)