Hacking GLOG magic into The Benign Brown Beast's Palace Run

Ian over at the Benign Brown Beast made an excellent game entry for 2019's 200 Word RPG Challenge called Palace Run. He also has a blog post with all his different versions so you can see how the game moved through iterations with feedback from play testing. 

I love this game. It is brilliant. The only thing missing is GLOG-style magic. Here is my attempt to hack it into the game. I didn't bother trying to stay below 200 words. 

Art by Oscar Perez

PALACE GLOG

One player is REFEREE. Others, CHARACTERS.

"d6" means "six-sided die". "d20", 20-sided.

CHARACTERS

===

Choose name, POSSESSION. MAX STAT=10.

CHECK: roll d20<=STAT.

Attacks auto-hit, d6 damage to STAT.

If damage takes you to half MAX STAT or less, CHECK. Failure --> Roll on Wound table.

STAT<=0 --> death.

REST --> STAT=10.

After each successful ADVENTURE, +2 MAX STAT. 

POSSESSIONS

Sword (+1 damage)

Hand-mirror

Marbles (100)

Chalk

Glue

Flute

Rope

Wine

Bucket

Hammer

Spellstone (random spell)

You can carry a number of POSSESSIONS up to MAX STAT. As STAT lowers from damage you must drop POSSESSIONS. 

SPELLSTONE

Hold in two hands and cast the spell. Burn 1 STAT to invest one d6 Magic Die (MD). The spell's effect is based on the number of [dice] invested and their [sum]. You can invest as many MD as you want; this may force a Wound CHECK or kill you. Rolling doubles incurs MISHAPS. Rolling triples incurs DOOMS. MD that show 4-6 burn 1 additional STAT each. 

MISHAPS

1. For 24h, MD that show 3-6 burn 1 additional STAT each. 

2. Take d6 damage. 

3. Random mutation for 1d6 rounds, then CHECK. On failure, permanent. 

4. Lose 2 MAX STAT for 24h.

5. Agony for 1d6 minutes. 

6. Cannot cast spells for 1d6 hours. 

DOOMS (first triples gives first DOOM, second gives second, etc.)

1. Lose 2 MAX STAT for 24h; cannot cast spells for 24h 

2. Lose 2 MAX STAT for 24h; cannot cast spells for 3 days. 

3. Lose 2 MAX STAT for 24h; cannot cast spells permanently. 

-------------------------------

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

Design notes. 

I changed the starting STAT value to 10. In Ian's multiple versions, he bounced around a lot of different stat values. I like 10 because I am a huge fan of the low-level 50/50 chance of success at a difficult task. When I run games, I hardly ever make my players roll dice, because I am constantly pushing them to come up with clever plans. I always allow clever plans to succeed without a roll, and when I do ask for a roll, I usually say "Remember, with your Stat you only have a 50% chance of success. You can try to come up with a different plan if you want." So I know this low STAT value will work for me in my games. 

I complement this with a simple levelling system. For every successful Adventure, characters gain +2 MAX STAT. Probably I would max this out at 18 because 20 means auto-success at everything.

I also changed the death/wound rules. Instead of making a save when you take more than 2 damage, you make a save when you reach half your MAX STAT value. So at Level 1, i.e. 10 MAX STAT, this means you effectively have 5 Hit Points before you make a Wound CHECK. Each level gain gives you 2 additional "HP." You can still take damage below that value, but you'll have to keep making CHECKS against Wounds. For Wounds, I guess you could simply use your Death & Dismemberment Table of choice. There are a lot of options for that (I love the one by Cavegirl) but I haven't looked through to decide what I would use for this game. Obviously many of these would require conversion to the Palace Run mien. 

Statistics.

So what does this mean for magic? Well firstly it means that anybody can cast spells as long as they have a spellstone. I would probably make them available upon character creation, since playing a GLOG wizard is tons of fun. So why not let everybody be a wizard? 

But it also means that starting characters have  access to many potential MD to invest in their spells. Right at the start they can invest multiple MD into spells, while regular GLOG wizards have to wait all the way until level 2. However, each MD invested has a 50/50% chance of burning 1 or 2 points of STAT. That adds up really quickly. 

Here are some stats to bring this all into perspective.

1 MD (average STAT burn = 1.5)

50%	1 Stat
50%	2 Stat

2 MD (average STAT burn = 3)

25%	2 Stat
50%	3 Stat
25%	4 Stat

3 MD (average STAT burn = 4.5)

16.6%	3 Stat
33.3%	4 Stat
33.3%	5 Stat
16.6%	6 Stat

4 MD = (average STAT burn = 6)

12.5%	4 Stat
25%	5 Stat
25%	6 Stat
25%	7 Stat
12.5%	8 Stat

Caster’s MAX STAT	Maximum # of 1-MD spells cast while safe from a Wound check	Maximum # of 1-MD spells cast in best-case-scenario before risking a Wound check	Maximum # of MD invested in one spell guaranteed to NOT risk a Wound check
10	2	4	2
12	2	5	2
14	3	6	3
16	3	7	3
18	4	8	4

I mean this is what we all pictured when I said "Spellstone," right?

Interpretation.

A first level Palace Runner (10 MAX STAT) with a spellstone can cast their spell twice with 1 MD invested into it, and know for sure they won't risk a Wound CHECK. If things go great for them and they keep rolling 1-3 on their [dice], they might be able to cast up to 4 spells at 1 MD each. But if they take any amount of damage, that equation goes out the window. With weapons dealing d6 damage, the average hit (3.5 damage to STAT) reduces your capacity for spellcasting by more than 2 MD worth. 

A first level Palace Runner (10 MAX STAT) can also cast one spell with 2 MD invested into it, while knowing they will be safe from a Wound CHECK. Again, any damage taken throws this out the window too. This is different from a first-level GLOG wizard, who can never invest 2 MD into a spell. 

Palace Runners become more capable casters at higher MAX STAT, eventually being able to invest 4 MD into a single spell without risking a Wound CHECK, just like a fourth-level GLOG wizard. In the best-case-scenario of all 1-3 [dice] results, they could be casting their spell up to 8 times per day. Again, damage can lessen their abilities, but the extra wiggle room lessens the blow a bit. 

I'm not sure exactly how this lines up against regular GLOG wizards, but it feels like Palace Run casters have more MD at their disposal, especially if they avoid the fray of melee and keep their STAT value high. However, GLOG wizards start with 2 spells known and learn new spells every level. Palace Runners start with at most one spell, and need to find new spellstones as treasure (like spellbooks in Knave). 

But at the end of the day, I'm not really worried about balance here. I think it is super interesting for players to have to balance their MD use against not only the risk of Mishaps/Dooms, but also spending their own STAT, which functions as both Hit Points and Abilities/Skills. The more spells you cast, the worse you're going to be at EVERY activity, and the easier you'll be to bring down. A 10 MAX STAT Palace Runner who casts two 1 MD spells and gets 4-6 on both rolls will have burned 4 STAT—this means that one well-placed hit from a sword (d6 damage) could kill them permanently, bypassing the Wound CHECK completely. That is nice and fragile. It means everyone will want spellstones, but nobody will be spamming spells all day. 

I haven't tested this out in play, but I would be interested in hearing any thoughts people had. 

***

This hack obviously could not exist without Ian's Palace Run. But it is also inspired by:

- the GLOG by Arnold Kemp

- Into the Odd by Chris McDowall

- Knave by Ben Milton

- Mausritter by Isaac Williams (love those runestones)

- Moonhop by Type1Ninja