Space World 1: Asteroid Base, Part 1

Our first full session of Space World, an Apocalypse World game inspired by Firefly, quickly snowballed. This occurred partly because that is how the game goes and partly because we all co-MC'ed so there was three times the normal game master imagination at work. The time between character creation and play contributed as well, giving some of us time to build threats and fronts.

Details on the characters can be found here and here.

I've lost most of my notes from the early game but here is a threat I added early on:

Threat: Spook Bashers
Kind: Brutes: Enforcers
Impulse: victimize those who stand out
Description: spook bashers use the excuse of space madness and the strangeness of spooks to justify their xenophobia. Their close-knit groups are generally immune to space madness.
Countdown: up to 9:00 a small gangs pesters weird outsiders. 9:00: a gang strikes at spooks. 10:00: gang size grows to medium. 11:00: the xenophobes take over the location and lead an angry mob (2-Harm, 0- Armor gang) to drive out any outsiders.

The Asteroid Base

I don't know which Stats where highlighted but they probably included Weird for Brace (the Brainer) and Vivek (the Savvyhead), Sharp for Gale (the Angel) and Hot for Midnight Storm (the Skinner). We were a nice group like that.

A thin haze clung to the asteroid as Brace brought the ship in. The Starlight rumbled towards a small dirty dome just below the ridge of an impact crater. The crew transmitted the security codes and the station security directed them to the large berth at the edge of the dome.

The Starlight settled easily into the crumbling dockyard. Its engines blasted dust into the air. Figures scurried beside the massive hull, connecting power conduits and gas lines. The cargo bay doors hissed open. The crew disembarked in dribs and drabs to make trades and stretch their legs.

Midnight Storm walked down the metal ramp first. His guitar bounced on his back. Ignoring the bustle around him, the slim young man made his way to the rows of stalls and shops in the distance.

I decide to be Artful & Gracious.

Back at the Starlight, Brace cornered Gale on the way to the aft port. As the two talked quickly about their plans, the spook moves one pale hand to Gale's. He made contact with his strange two-fingered glove.

Brace used his violation glove. Then he used Deep Brain Scan and got a soft hit.


Brace's mind rummaged through Nightingale's memories, finding a moment of weakness in her past. In an instant, they relived the struggle to save a patient: the emergency measures, the fight to bring them back and the terrible shame of failure as the patient's life signs flatlined.

Nightingale slapped Brace's hand away and stormed off into town.

As the spook contemplated his new insight, Vivek passed by. Brace asked the funny smelling man where he is headed. Vivek explained he is off to trade his wares. Brace tagged along Vivek to the market.

Already in the market, Midnight found a stage in the form of a rusting railing in front of an empty shop. He swungs his guitar free, his long elegant coat flaring out in the asteroid's weak gravity. The young man strummed the guitar, matching the slow sad tune that emerged with a few sorrowful lyrics.

Midnight Storm looked up at a few travelers and locals taking notice. With his next song he picked up the tempo and the mood before hitting the crowd pleasers. Soon dozens of men, women and children crowded the area, listening to his music. Up on the gangways, some armed and important men looked on favorably while near the front of the crowd some of the local women cheered loudly.

Midnight Storm got a hard hit on Artful & Gracious.

We decide H, the man in charge of the settlement, wanted to offer Midnight a reward. Amy fell in love with him and her father Visage desired his services.

The men began to descend from the gangway, their weapons stowed and faces smiling. One of the women rushed up to Midnight.

"I'm Amy," she said, smiling broadly.

As Midnight eyed the attractive young woman, a clean-shaven man glided up behind her. Amy turned and said, "Oh, this is my father Visage."

Visage greeted Midnight Storm graciously and invited him back to their house to a private performance. Sensing the prospect of jingle and sex, Midnight agreed.

I'm moving some of the material around to keep from focusing on one person or group too long. Brace tended to attract such attention, bouncing off multiple PCs in rapid succession. It makes keeping a reasonable narrative flow hard.

Gale wandered the junk shops of the market, searching for a "new" Kalmine Filter for the water recycler. She eventually found one at Bob and Bob’s. Parts from all sorts of devices sat piled on top of each other.

The two sickly men behind the counter agreed to sell her the Kalmine filter in exchange for some morphine. The medic examined the grayish men carefully as she pull some out of her kit. They cough and wheeze as she gathered the ampoules.

Meanwhile, an 8-year old boy peered from behind the piles at her. Gale saw the same gray tinge to his skin.Gale wandered the junk shops of the market, searching for a "new" Kalmine Filter for the water recycler. She eventually found one at Bob and Bob’s. Parts from all sorts of devices sat piled on top of each other.

The two sickly men behind the counter agreed to sell her the Kalmine filter in exchange for some morphine. The medic examined the grayish men carefully as she pull some out of her kit. They cough and wheeze as she gathered the ampoules.

Meanwhile, an 8-year old boy peered from behind the piles at her. Gale saw the same gray tinge to his skin.

Deeper in the market Brace and Vivek wandered the stalls looking for a buyer. Vivek questioned some venders and discovered the local drug lord is a man named Chin. If he wanted to sell his drugs he needed to go through Chin. Chin's opium den sat on the edge of the dome, near the old mine entrance.

I believe we used the market move and got a soft hit.

The pair began to leave the market but noticed a couple talking in low voices and pointing at Brace. Sensing the familiar contempt of "spook” haters, he and Vivek tried to exit quickly.

The pair, a brawny woman and a thick-set man, cut them off. Their verbal abuse quickly escalated into a fist fight. While Vivek dodged the female thug's attacks, Brace tangled with the man. The spook gripped his bare arm and pried out his darkest secrets.

I believe we used Acting Under Fire and Deep Brain Scan (again). Which Brace followed up with a Manipulate (I think).

Brace told the man, Rocks, what he now knows, freaking him out and convincing him to back off. Frightened and strangely entranced, Rocks told the woman to back off as well. She stormed off at his cowardice. Brace then convinced Rocks to follow them into an alley and share some of Vivek's stash.

Vivek pressed on without Brace. Near the edge of the dome, he found a squat stone structure. The only entrance was a stout metal door.

Vivek knocked.

A small slot opened on the door a few inches above his head. Through the grate, Vivek spied a tall man, heavy-set with blunging neck muscles. The drug maker explained his purpose.

The door swings inward. The massive guard within led him into the dark chamber beyond. As the door clanged shut, Vivek's eyes adjusted to the gloom. Small candles lit several interconnected chambers. Trails of gray smoke rouse up from where several people smoked thin pipes and reclined on rough mats.

The guard guided Vivek deeper into the structure. Near the back, a man in fine clothes lay on a soft mattress.

Chin greeted Vivek.

Vivek offered The drug lord as sample of his wares but the drug lord waved him off. "If I am to test your goods, you must also partake."

As they both smoked the altered weed, Vivek's mind expanded and opened to the psychic maelstrom.

Unfortunately I don't know what he saw. Possibly he failed his roll to open his brain.

When Vivek woke up, he found three scantily clad women around him. Chin reclined in a wooden chair nearby and smiled at the drug maker. "That was some good stuff. I can offer you pure water, quality linens, or one of these women for the rest."

After the moment's thought, Vivek decided to take one of the women, Donna. The woman numbly stood, a nervous hand smoothing her stringy hair. She smiled, her bright eyes jumping from Vivek's feet to his head.

Meanwhile Midnight followed Amy and her father to the crumbling shack where they lived. Inside colorful fabric hung from the ceiling, letting through a gentle light tinged red, orange and yellow.

Visage's "family" were already waiting for them. A dozen or more men and women worked within the house. Though they belonged to different ethnicities and clans, they shared the same language and focused intensity.

Visage urged the musician to play for them. He pulled out his guitar and sung a quick song. The crowd responded quickly, swaying to the beat and joining into the chorus. More and more of them appeared as he played,blocking the doors and crowding in on him.

As their excitement grew, Midnight searched for an escape. Men and woman pushed in on the crates forming the stage. They began to claw at his pants and shirt, hungry for more of him.

Thinking quick, he slowed the tempo. The crowd's clawing turned to pets and caresses even as they continued to press in. Midnight crafted a chorus for his next song and convinced the crowd to join in a wave.

As they got caught up in the lyrics, he made his move. Before they realized he stopped playing, he slipped through under their arms and past the press. When they discovered their mistake, he was already out the back.

I'm pretty sure I acted under fire there.

Next week, we'll see if Midnight escapes, what happens with Donna and if what Brace and Gale find.

Space World Pregame Material: Spooks, Link-Flight, and Brace

Between session 0 and session 1, our missing player and co-MC, Jamil created his character: Brace. We added some significant details to the culture of the world to complement him and some custom moves to handle piloting space ships.

Brace

I have less material on this character than I expected. Unlike the rest of us, Jamil didn't record his character on the communal website. I do know that he was an XP junkie and earned many advancements before his story was done.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Originally Brace was a Brainer.

I'm not sure which stat line he took but I suspect it was the one with Cool+2.

His starting moves definitely included Deep Brain Scan. He also might have had unnatural lust fixation.

He began with a violation glove of course.

Like many spooks, Brace seems strange. Thin and angular, his body moves with a grace that is both beautiful and inhuman. Like many of his kind, his skin is pale and his features tend to the striking and distorted.

Brace dresses himself in scraps of pilot gear. Working under Captain Farley he has piloted the Starlight through several dangerous encounters.

The long hours traversing the void of space began the changes to his mind and body that made him the freak he is today. His mind widened he now seeks to use his new abilities to pry into the hearts and thoughts of those around him.

Link-Flight

We planned these ship piloting skills mostly for Brace but we never really used them.

Link-flying is a perception synching method of piloting that creates a direct connection between a ship and its pilot. The procedure improves the reaction time and overall flight control. Prolonged link-flight can cause disorganized, irritable, and sometimes antisocial behavior. These effects are usually temporary, the implications has caused link-flight to remain a “high stakes” utility.

Entering link-flight is a relatively simple process. Exiting link-flight is likewise simple, assuming the ship is in a neutral, non-demanding state. Removal from link-flight during trying and active use can cause physical and psychological damage.

When using link-flight, you get +1ongoing when flying your ship.

When you end link-flight abruptly, or during a trying encounter, roll+hard. On a 10+, you suffer a headache and a nose bleed – nothing more. On a 7-9, choose 1 of the following:
Take 1-harm (ap)
Take -1ongoing for the duration of the scene
You are left stunned, unable to act or make coherent sense of the situation

On a miss, all three.

When you end link-flight in a calm, controlled situation, roll+weird. You are fine on a 10+. On a 7-9, you have headaches, shaking hands, irritability, or the like (MC details). On a miss, you get the effects of a 7-9 roll, plus the experience has a long-term impact on your psyche…

Spooks

This setting detail is important in our initial story. Brace is but one of many Spooks and there are always those looking to victimize them.

Spooks are humans who have been changed by prolonged exposure to deep space. They may possess one or more of the following features:

• Pale, sickly skin
• Unnerving eyes or stare
• Drawn in, boney appearance
• Social awkwardly
• Social ambivalence
• Unnatural insight
• Reclusive behaviors
• Constant sweating, shaking, or shortness of breath
• An invasive, un-ignorable presence

Spooks and reavers may or may not be related but the popular conception is that the two are inexorably linked.

Next time, the first full session!

Music For Player Characters

Last week, I mentioned how my second Apocalypse World character, Midnight Storm, was inspired by music (specifically the song Juke Box Hero by Foreigner). I think players in general can use music for player characters both as a tool for character creation and for maintaining thematic and tonal consistency in a character over the course of a campaign.

Using music in my games is a common thread for me. I use ambient music in play. I create soundtracks for my campaigns to inspire me while I write-up adventures. Finally I create soundtracks for characters and occasionally base a character on a song.

Music in Character Creation

As I researched how other players use music, I found inspiration for character creation was the common theme. This can take many different forms and impact different parts of the character.

The music can define a character's theme, like Midnight Storm's quest to become a postapocalyptic rock star. You might use some the lyrics to flesh out the character's life story. For example, Midnight Storm's signature instrument is a beat up guitar he found in an old crate. Now he's got to keep rocking. It can also serve as their theme music. Dark brooding music could fit a anti-hero or tragic figure while bubbly pop might give you ideas for more innocent character.

Music can also inspire the style for musically inclined characters. In D&D this of course means bards. Given the interests of the people I questioned, I shouldn't be surprised at the number of bards sing the blues or rocking metal. My initial example, Midnight Storm, is explicitly a rock star.

My friend Chuck provided me several other specific examples. In D&D he based a bard around the lyrics to The Gods Made Heavy Metal by Manowar. The character preached the gospel of metal as he wandered the land. In a Mage game, his character Big Ben leaned into the clichés of rap music and drew a lot of his inspiration for the Moros (or Necromancer to the layperson) from Life's a Bitch and Then You Die. He's based vampires on song lyrics as well.

You also can find many other examples of using music to inspire characters over at Matt McFarland's blog.

Character Soundtracks

Just as I give campaigns soundtracks to establish and maintain the game's themes, you can use a character soundtrack to keep your character's personality and mood consistent session to session. You might listen to it on the way over the game or when you have a chance to reflect on your plans for next session.

The length of such a soundtrack is entirely up to you but in my experience, an album or two's worth of songs tends to keep the soundtrack diverse enough yet focused. Try to keep it under an hour.

Here examples I've used in the past.

My first Apocalypse World character relied on a single album, Skillet's Comatose. Our game focused a psychic darkness devouring the world. Specter, my character, was a techie who liked to experiment with the Darkness and who had lost her family to it when she was a child. The album kept me on track with Specter's struggles with her obsession, survivor's guilt, and slow slide in madness.

In my friend's Vampire: the Requiem Elder's game, I played the Rat-King. This manipulator was a multilayered mystery: a vampire cloaked in illusions, hiding her gender, her clan, and her dark past from the rest of the city. At the same time, she had ambitions: to put the Carthian faction in power, to bring equality to even the weakest vampires, to learn another Elder's secrets, and possibly to become Prince. My soundtrack included many songs by Digital Daggers and Icon for Hire, reinforcing the core themes of the character: loneliness, a desire for revenge (on her sire), and the stresses of a public persona.

Other Uses of Music for Player Characters

I have a couple other (untested) ideas of how you might use music as a player in your games.

Assuming your gamemaster also incorporates music into their game, you might suggest some theme music for your character. The gamemaster could play this when your character is the focus of a scene or action, such as when you rush in to rescue the rest of party or face off against a personal challenge (or when you emerge triumphant).

You can also just pick music that your character would like. This might be referenced in-game to add flavor ("you enter Jane's apartment, the Cure blaring out of the sound system"), used to your advantage ("He's a fan of big band music? Well we know Chester has a large collection of vintage albums..."), or just to get into the character's mental head space.

What do you think? How have you used music as a player?

Space World Session 0

Welcome to the Apocalypse World actual play Space World. In 2012, I played my second Apocalypse World game. It was also the Apocalypse World game I ran, or rather co-ran. It was wonderful experience, one I've tried to replicate ever since.

Here is an expanded recap of the first session along with commentary with the perspective of 6 more years of experience.

Space World Session 0

The Pre-Session

Our group consisted of four players: Jamil, my first MC; Jordan; Grace, my wife; and myself. We all had some experience with Apocalypse World thanks to the game Jamil MC'ed for us.

For this campaign we decided to do something different. We decided to co-MC: each of us would control separate fronts and threats, ideally ones that our own characters would not be directly involved with.

I believe we followed the guidance here.

After tossing around a number of ideas, we decided to set our game in space, with the characters living in isolated spaceships after something horrible happened to humanity. Now mad humans, called Reavers, seek to murder the few sane survivors.

Obviously we all loved Firefly.

The remaining humans stay safe by remaining isolated in the void of space for long periods. They come together regularly to trade goods and services in grand gatherings. Otherwise people eek out a lonely existence aboard cramped ships, occasionally making the wary trade or scavenging the corpses of dead worlds. Planets are too dangerous to live on. The Reavers pillaged those first.

We decided the available technology is somewhat primitive. Shot guns, rifles and pistols dominate the armories. There are robots but they are battered relics or jury rigged machines. Lasers, wireless comms, and other high tech devices are rare and expensive.

Then we set a date to make characters and start play.

Play Begins

In a typical first session of Apocalypse World, you make your character, choose their moves, and then play through a typical day. Unfortunately for us, Jamil couldn't make it to the first session.

So instead we worked on the setting and characters until we couldn't continue on without his character. We focused on the events leading up to the formation of the ship's crew, including our characters and some NPCs.

Vivek

Originally Jordan named his Savvyhead Robert Williams. Later once he saw the tone we were taking with names, he revised it to Vivek.

Statwise he use the line: Cool: +1 Hard: -1 Hot: 0 Sharp: +1 Weird: +2

Vivek began with the moves: Things Speak and Bonefeel.

His workshop included a controlled growing environment among other features.

Vivek grew up on one of the last planet colonization attempts. After the evacuations, the wiry man fell in with the wrong crowd. His investigative mind and his horticulture skills proved useful to certain druglords. The work and the drugs helped distract him from his planet-side memories.

Many assume Vivek is perpetually stoned, given his dark distracted eyes, unkempt hair and oddly stained clothing. That assumption made slipping his keepers two years ago much easier.

Vivek has ambitions. The biochemist and specialty botanist helped create some of the finest chemical distractions in the sector. While the drug lords wanted the product cheap and addictive, he wants to experiment.

The chemist fled with their premium stash and the recipes for their catalogue. Vivek made his way to Lilly Pad Base 3 hoping to go into business for himself.

Three weeks into his operation, Reavers attacked Lilly Pad Base 3.

Vivek needed to get aboard a ship. At the docks, he spotted an old hulk powering up for an escape. He slip aboard in the confusion and hid in the depths of the secondary cargo bay while the space station burned.

Nightingale

Elsewhere aboard the Starlight, a small figure in a vac suit helped a heavily pregnant woman to the unmanned medbay.

Nightingale doffed her helmet and helped Tally into one of the beds. Her kept a steady gaze on the expectant mother as the contractions grew closer together. As the ship's engines roared to life, Tally's water broke.

In an effort to attribute artwork better, my wife used a photo of the actress Gong Li for this picture.

Thankfully Nightingale's mentor aboard the Centurion, her childhood home, prepared her for this.

Our Angel, played by Grace, used the stat line: Cool: -1, Hard: +1, Hot: 0, Sharp: +2, Weird: +1

She has the starting moves: Infirmary and Healing Touch.

Her starting gear included a space suit (1-armor) and a revolver.

As Nightingale went to work, she reflected on the doctor's teachings. She hadn't seen him in almost a decade. Not since she and her brother Bluejay went searching for their parents, who had disappeared on a scouting mission.

Gale's thoughts drifted back to that time as the ship decoupled.

Then Bluejay piloted the small shuttle out of the old warship, negotiating the patrols and checkpoints. Gale took care of rations.

Weeks passed.

Lost in the black, Gale begged her brother to send out a beacon.

"The Reavers will pick up the signal," Jay told her.

An explosion rocked the tiny craft at that moment. The double hull fractured. An exploding consol scorched Jay’s flesh and sent him reelling.

Gale rushed to him. Her ears popped as air vented into space. Blood pooled around Jay as he lay on the floor breathing weakly.

Desperate, Gale reached out for some sort help. Her mind connected with something. She drew power from the cosmos with her will and hope and poured it into the atoms of her brother’s flesh stitching it closed. Her head spinning, Gale slammed on the distress beacon before losing consciousness.

The teenagers were rescued by a passing freighter and managed to pay their way using Gale’s skills and Jay’s charm. They continued travelling, moving from ship to ship, base to base, planetoid to planet. They left many unpaid debts and incomplete contracts.

Then one day Jay disappeared.

Nightingale wiped her brow and dismissed her reverie as she prepared to catch Tally's child. Jay often talked about his plans for the future. Lilly Pad Base 3 was key to his designs but how Gale didn't know. Now she might never find out.

The child slipped out easily and took his first gasp of air. As she handed Tally her child, a crowd of wounded arrived at the medbay.

"Are you a doctor?" the lead man asked. Behind him, a handsome youth cradling a badly burned arm caught her eye.

"Yes," she said.

Midnight Storm

Finally my character enters the narrative. I decided to play something hot and took as my inspiration the song Jukebox Hero. Midnight Storm is a post apocalyptic rock star.

Attributes: Cool+1, Hard+1, Hot+3, Sharp+1, Weird-2

Starting moves: Breathtaking, Artful & Gracious.

Midnight Storm's gear includes a long gorgeous coat (worn valuable); Acid, a zero-G adapted space cat (valuable alive), and a sleeve pistol (2-harm close reload loud).

I wish I could recall which rock star I used as the basis for this picture. I beleive it might be Bon Jovi, thanks to comments from my readers.

Midnight Storm's whole life burned in an instant. The 15-year-old tried to pull open the blast doors to Section 8, while the Reavers killed and ate everyone he ever knew. The dimly glowing metal seared his hand and forced him away. His home, his family, lay on the other side.

The surge of escapees carried him to the docks. A knot of people pushed him into an old hulk.

An older man in the crowd noticed his burns and hustled him into the infirmary. Some woman was already there cradling a baby while a doctor in a space suit checked their vitals.

"Are you a doctor?" the man, Captain Farley, asked.

The physician, Gale, guided Midnight to a bed and injected something into his arm. The pain subsided and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

A few hours later, he woke up. Around him the wounded slept quietly, lulled by narcotics and the drone of the ship's engines as they powered deeper into space, away from the Reavers and away from his home.

The only other sound Midnight could hear was a baby cooing. His mother, Tally, would soon name him Skip. A few days later, the newly bolstered crew found Vivek in the cargo hold. He agreed to join the crew for passage.

Now

In the last couple years, a certain peace has grown among the crew.

Vivek trades his brief flashes of mechanical and chemical expertise for a place on the ship. While this kept him out of the airlock, his occasional “bad trips” have earned him a bad reputation among many of the crew. On his worst trip he locked himself in the comms room and screamed over the ship intercomms for a solid hour.

Gale's medical expertise makes her indispensable. She still searches for her lost brother but Jay remains elusive.

Midnight has matured physically if not mentally. The slim man fills out his elegant leather coat. Despite his beautiful face and laughing eyes an edge of hardness clings to him. In the ship's hold, Midnight Storm found an old crate with an assortment of musical instruments, including a beat up six string guitar. He taught himself how to play and has become extremely skilled. He helps the crew get into trading posts and similar engagements with offers of entertainment to break the boredom.

Next time a quick look at Brace, some custom moves for the setting and some background material on Spooks, or people with a high Weird.

Tier System: a General System for Categorizing Scope in RPGs

Recently I've been thinking about the Tier system from Chronicles of Darkness and how it might be applied to other games and settings. The tier system I envision incorporates aspects of both scale and scope but focuses on the abstraction of the conflicts which the player characters encounter.

History

The Tier system, as far as I know, was introduced in the then new World of Darkness (a.k.a. Chronicles of Darkness) gameline Hunter: the Vigil. It supposes that a given game can be played at different degrees of scope or scale and attempts to codify what that means for the story and the characters.

In Hunter the Vigil this system consists of three levels of play. Tier 1 consists of unaffiliated hunter cells fighting local monsters. At Tier 2, hunters could join Compacts who tackled monsters on a city level. They gained access to special merits and training from their allies. At Tier 3, hunters belonged to world spanning Conspiracies who could lend them supernatural gifts to even the playing field.

Later books extended the system to other games. Tier 1 became street level where political and "clan" connections mattered less than the people immediate around you (i.e. the other PCs). Promethean with its road trip style of play exemplifies this. Tier 2 became city based play, the default for most games. Tier 3 continued to consist of globe-trotting adventures.

 

In the Mage: the Awakening book Imperial Mysteries, the system was expanded to the fourth tier, where reality itself became the battle ground. Victories and losses here could change the very nature of the world. Archmages struggle with gods and might endeavour to make it so vampires never existed.

My Tier System

For my version of this system, I focused on the scale and abstraction of the conflicts involved. That led me to decide on a system running from 0 to 5. 1 to 4 remain similar to what I described above but I focus less on the neighborhood/city/world split and more on the conflicts involved.

Tier 0: The Self

At this tier on conflict, the obstacles lie within. The player character struggle to overcome personal flaws and shortcomings. Other characters exist to highlight the internal conflict.

What I like about this tier is how it illustrates how a game can flow between tiers. PCs can focus on their weak social skills one session and fight to save a city the next time. Those different tier levels also impact each other, as internal problems hinder their conflicts at other tiers or vice versa. For example, overconfidence might let the local street tough lure them into a fight they can't win or their victory over a magical monstrosity may help to further inflate their ego.

Tier 1: Immediate Life

These are the struggles most people face. Dealing with coworkers, family and friends. Or in more desperate situations local gangs, criminals, or hostile wildlife.

All conflicts boil down to one on one struggles (or the PCs versus a similar small group). These "battles" may be physical or on some other arena like social interactions or intellectual puzzles. The important point is that they are direct. Your foe might not be explicitly named but they have a face you can punch (or hack or talk to depending on the conflict).

D&D works at this level for most of the early door bashing levels as do many other roleplaying games.

Tier 2: Politics

Here the struggles encompass larger regions and more importantly a larger cast. Now the PCs face foes they haven't met yet and might never meet directly. A single character can't realistically deal with all participants directly.

These conflicts include convincing a tribe of several hundred orcs to move on (violently or otherwise) and dealing with intrigues between rival factions of vampires. These conflicts can be mass battles, political intrigues, or social engineering.

Individuals matter here and your final foe still has a face, but there is also a large "chorus" that needs to be dealt with. Murdering everyone is impractical or counterproductive as is convincing every individual.

Tier 2 involves "public relations" and working with other power players in the setting. Many Chronicle of Darkness games and World of Darkness games alternate between this Tier and Tier 1 (with inner struggles like the Beast represented by Tier 0).

Tier 3: The Epic

At Tier 3 the scale expands greatly. What this means depends on the game. It might mean a larger region of play, where the PCs affect different (and distinct) communities. But it may also mean changing the political landscape dramatically by toppling an evil overlord or dismantling a world spanning conspiracy.

I was ambivalent about including this Tier even though my definition is similar to the original source. However I've come to the conclusion that the defining feature of Tier 3 is not so much the scale but the ripple effects of the result of conflict. For better or worse the world will not be the same afterwards.

Night's Black Agents is played at this level where defeating the vampiric conspiracy changes the world. Many D&D games at higher levels tend to this scale (which isn't surprising given the influence of Lord of Rings epic on the game).

Tier 4: Changing the Rules, Mythological Play

Things get weird beyond Tier 3.

At Tier 4, PCs engage in regular conflicts that alter the nature of reality. Moving beyond the political and occasionally physical changes of Tier 3, the struggles involved now may alter things like day and night, world history, the existence of major races, or aspects of the magic system.

PCs battle equally cosmic forces: archmagi, gods, and reality's inherent resistance to change. They are active actors in these conflicts, attempting to impress their own vision onto the world.

Time travel games naturally lend themselves to this tier, where altering history or restoring it is the whole point. At its highest levels, Mage: the Awakening deals with this type of play. This tier also serves to model mythic play, where PCs take on the roles of divine figures whose stories essentially create the world.

Tier 5: Game Changer (Literally)

Tier 5 would take the reality warping of Tier 4 a final step forward and have game play change the actual game mechanics. This tier is more hypothetical than anything I can point to in actual play.

Aspects of this appear in games in development where the push and pull of playtesting alters the game mechanics toward some final form. But that is towards a specific end and, I suspect, mostly guided by the developer.

But there is no reason that someone couldn't start a game (perhaps with Simple World) and play to see what rules develop. The players would add, alter and remove game mechanics based on the table consensus.

An alternate spin would be to switch between game systems depending on the action within the story. The PCs enter an ancient tomb and the players begin using D&D. They bicker over the spoils and move to Drama System. Finally they wake up after a hard night's partying to find their henchman murdered. Time for GUMSHOE.

Conclusion

So that's my rambling idea for now. People love classifying things and I think this might make a good system for classifying conflicts. What do you think? What system do you use or heard of?