DIE: A ROLE-PLAYING GAME V1.

1
ARCANA
KIERON GILLEN
©2019

ART BY STEPHANIE HANS

COVER DESIGN BY RIAN HUGHES

(This update with typos corrected December 2020)

Copyright © 2019 Kieron Gillen Ltd & Stéphanie Hans. All rights reserved. DIE, the Die logos, and the likenesses of all characters herein
or hereon are trademarks of Kieron Gillen Ltd & Stéphanie Hans. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means (except for short excerpts for journalistic or review purposes) without the express written permission of
Kieron Gillen Ltd or Stéphanie Hans. All names, characters, events, and places herein are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual
persons (living or dead), events, or places is coincidental.

Representation: Law Offices of Harris M. Miller II, P.C. (rights.inquiries@gmail.com)

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

1) ALTERNATIVE WORLD GENERATION METHODS

2) PRE-GENERATED SCENARIOS

3) ACTUAL EXAMPLE GAMES

4) EXPERIMENTAL RULES

5) ESSAYS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Arcana. Make yourself comfortable. No, wait, not that comfortable. Put
that back on, this minute. This is a respectable game manual.

You’ll have noticed that the DIE Beta is a considerable beast. That makes it intimidating.
It was even more intimidating when this bunch of stuff was included too. That’s why I
removed it, you silly goose.

There’re basically five sorts of “things” in the Arcana, helpfully arranged into numbered
sections.

Firstly, there’s alternate world-building and scenarios. The DIE Beta suggests a single
set scenario – people who played an RPG as younger people getting back together and
then getting sucked into a warped version of their teenage D&D game. This was chosen
as it is a strong enough structure to work for any group you throw into it – plus the
simple fact that kids getting back together as adults is the same structure the comic
uses. This section gives my notes for completely different ways of running DIE – both in
terms of the groups of people, and the worlds you drop them into. These are often
considerably more demanding on a Master’s planning and/or improv skills, as you’re on
your own a lot more. Still – there’s lots of fun stuff in here, which can be added to
literally any game of DIE. There’s even one way which makes things simpler.

Secondly, I’ve also included a handful of pre-generated non-traditional DIE scenarios,

both of which can work as a single-session game, or as a prompt for a larger one. If
you’re thinking of writing a DIE scenario for someone else to run or even making a more
formal set of notes for yourself, these are likely a useful template to build from. One was
originally in the backmatter for issue 7, but the others are new (and one is festive!).

Thirdly, there’s additional worked examples of how various people have run DIE. If
you’re still chewing over how a DIE game could go and what sort of prep you may wish
to do, this is more grist for the mill. This is the Arcana at its most accessible – in fact, the
only reason it’s not in the main text is that having five long examples of how DIE could
run in the document could overwhelm a newcomer instead of helping them.

Fourthly, we have some additional, slightly fiddly non-core rules. The most useful are
probably the Minor Miracle generation, which are likely useful to a GM of a more
technical bent. There’s a couple of other minor things. If there’s any future Arcana
additions, this is likely where I’ll lob stuff for extra playtesting.

Fifthly, we have some additional essays which I considered too self-indulgent or

tangential to the main thrust of the DIE game, so I hide them here for the sort of people
who read the Appendixes in Tolkien to find. This includes also some rough structural
thoughts on how to generate an adventure. This was my first attempt to codify What An
Adventure Is, and trying to work out a way to give a hard structure for people to follow.
When I found the core game (i.e. “Go to your old RPG World”) it felt extraneous. However,
I wanted to get this in front of people to see if it’s of any use, and whether anything is
worth integrating elsewhere. Feedback gratefully received. There are also the traditional
designer notes because, as you may notice, I Can’t Shut Up.

If you’re a newcomer and looking for more assistance, I’d suggest reading the third
section, as it’s the one which is designed to be most helpful – and the second section
for other examples of how to prepare for a game. The others are generally designed to
try and destabilise your thinking, and get you to figure out what you find interesting.
This is some of the weirdest stuff that is in DIE, and stuff which is most easily lifted to
use in games elsewhere. Feel free to rip it to pieces and make it your own.

Basically, this is me down the pub. After one drink, I’m fine, but at some point in the
evening I’m going to start talking absolute nonsense and all we can do is pray that you
still find it compelling.

Thanks for reading.

Kieron Gillen
London
Can I tell you a story?
You know the way locales are generated
in the main rules? As in, “Just drop the
personas into their teenage RPG world”?
Up until January 2019, that didn’t exist –
over a year into development and
scarily close to the release of the Beta.
The most obvious idea in this whole
bloody system and I hadn’t had it, until I
was prompted by a playtest. This is, of
course, one of the many reasons why
we do playtests.
Before then I had a whole set of
different tactics for generating the
locale. Like, a bunch of them, and they
all kind of work for different kinds of
groups of personas. However, as fun as
they were, they were also esoteric as all
hell. Some would work for one group, but
none would work for all groups, which
mean it’s a bad thing to stick in a Beta
set of rules.
Essentially all of them were much more
based on extrapolating from players’
obsessions. So a failed band ended up in
a horror version of the Reading music
festival, and a group of workers at an IT
company ended up in a hellish take on
actual office space we were running the
playtest in. A lot of games were set at
cons, as a lot of playtests were at cons.
Then I hit a playtest where the group
didn’t actually go hyper-vivid, and just
developed what the rules asked them to.
They were a group of people who played
RPGs at school, and then grew up.
I had no idea what world to drop them in,
and then hit what is now the basic
version of the game. As in, if you
generate people who (at least mostly)
played RPGs together, you can drop
them into their old D&D world and get an
interesting game with sufficient hooks
to run an adventure on. You generated
the details of their teenage world by
asking questions during play, and then
deconstructing it. You made up
something to be nostalgic about, then
you applied a darker lens.
Immediately, about 10,000 words of
different ways to generate worlds were
no longer essential to the Beta. They
were cut.
They now follow here. This whole DIE
ruleset is experimental, but what
follows is the most experimental of it.
It’s mainly of use if you choose to
generate a group who didn’t play RPGs
together – in other words, if you choose
to go that way, you are wayyyy out of
the safety bounds of the playtest.
But there’s other tactics to generate a
locale. They’ve led to some of the most
fun DIE games I’ve run… but they also
ask a lot more of the person running the
game. The easiest way to use the
following is to add them as elements to
the core DIE game you already know, to
add weirdness to an already existing
standard fantasy world – for example, if
you’re in a traditional D&D castle, and
open a door… and find yourself in your
persona’s teenage bedroom? That can
be creepy and interesting.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
I said in the main manual that the
further encounters and world building
there weren’t a recipe, but rather a
cupboard of ingredients and spices to
throw into a dish. This is the stuff you
keep on the top shelf, as it’s so spicy.
A key idea here: you are running this
game. You are the keeper of this world.
I'm providing tools which are useful to
you. Flexibility is absolutely key here. As
are unpredictability and magic. The
players can see that there is some
meaning here – they can see you're
actually clearly doing stuff, moving stuff
from the (soon to be explained) Box of
Crap and similar... but they can't really
entirely understand it, not completely.
This is entirely the effect we're looking
for. Confronting a world they don't quite
understand, but clearly has some
manner of rules. That gives a weird
solidity to the world, as well as a
ritualism and totemism. DIE differs from
many RPGs as it is trying to fetishize the
RPG, to explicitly mystify it, to use all
these bits and pieces and props as
producers of mystery and wonder.
Put it this way: if I – Kieron Gillen – am
playing your game, I won't know for sure
how your world works. It is deliberately
concealed from me. That is its magic.
HOW DO I USE THIS STUFF?
The core process to using the following
methods in a game of DIE is this:
1) Generate a group of people who
know each other. Remove all
limitations from the Beta in terms of
the questions they’re asking and
asked – all that remains is that
they’re getting together for some
reason to play an RPG.
2) Look at the resultant personas and
decide which of the available tactics
would generate a useful world.
Choose one or more.
3) Continue as a normal game of DIE.
Here’s some more options:
1) THEY ENTER THEIR PRESENT
TABLETOP RPG WORLD
I’ll put this here explicitly, to remind you
that it’s an option. The core DIE game
rules describe a group getting back
together and getting dragged into their
teenage RPG world. It doesn’t have to be
their teenage RPG world. It can be the
RPG they’re normally playing on any
week when they’re not being dragged
screaming into another dimension.
The time-jump in the core rules is
explicitly about echoing the comic. The
core DIE game experience should be
what the comic does, right? That’s why
the game does it.
However, it is actually a little more
complicated than just playing in a single
time window. It also has the advantage
of being able to plug any group into the
scenario – including more personas
who’ve never played an RPG before.
The only problem is making sure there’s
enough narrative meat in the personas.
This all comes from asking questions to
ensure the group has needs and
connections, as always.
2) DARK MIRRORS OF REAL LOCATIONS
This is arguably the easiest way to
generate a map. Take a real-world
location and set-dress it like it's in a
horror or dark fantasy film. Ideally, this
map should be in the Box of Crap, but
any real-world location you know (and
ideally the players know) is great. For
example, using a local mall, an old
school or a museum.
This is an especially useful method if
you're playing a game in a public space,
like a games convention. Take the con
map, and interpret it like a dungeon
map, using the information on the map
to inform whatever happens to the
players there. To use the con example,
perhaps the retailers are actually a
bustling town of merchants desperately
selling stuff – equipment, their souls,
bits of their body. Or maybe it's a dragon
horde, as that's where the money is.
These are all just more ingredients to
suggest the nature of an encounter. In
the second section of the Arcana, you’ll
find a pre-generated scenario which
uses a con map in exactly this way.
In the same way as I suggest using a
dark mirror of the room the players are
sitting in as a basic option, I would
suggest extrapolating the locale around
the room (and the house) to generate a
setting for encounters if you want a
robust option. Expand the house in size,
even the smallest flat can be like
Mordor. The first encounter is in the
living room, the next in the corridor, then
up the stairs for a third encounter and
so on. Who knows what hell exists in
your toilet? If you expand outside the
house into the neighbourhood, all the
local shops and landmarks can provide
a lot of inspiration. I actually live near a
graveyard, a school, a church, an old
music hall and a railway station. You live
near interesting stuff too, even if it's an
odd tree, or a weird ditch.
If not the meta-approach, there is also
the persona-led approach. If players are
talking about any real-world location
that matters to their persona, you can
get hold of the map of that real location
and use it. If players are setting their
personas in a real town, you can get a
map of their town. Someone mentions
the British Museum? Download the map
and use it as a dungeon.
This is a useful backbone to build on –
and you can always switch to another
method (and back again) at any point.
3) REINTERPRETING OLD RPG MAPS
Rather than playing with the nature of
our reality, an alternative approach is
playing with the nature of fantasy. As
such, take a random RPG supplement
with a map, and use it to inspire the
dungeon your players are exploring.
I stress: this is using the map in the
same way that option 1 uses the real
world to inspire the encounter. This is
born of looking at the map, seeing what
each room or corridor is, and then
twisting it. If a bank in option 1 becomes
a dragon lair, a dragon lair in an old RPG
map could become the place where a
persona's bank manager lurks,
demanding repayment of their looming
debts. At the absolute least, this
provides a concrete environment for
your players to explore. This works
especially well with the artificialities of
particularly old RPG maps, with their 30
foot by 30-foot rooms. Imagine walking
through a place with such geometric
precision. That's creepy. Lean into it.
One of the points of most of these
methods is a way of orientating players
in a weird situation. Option 1 generally
lets you orientate with real-world
knowledge. Option 2 gives the player an
actual fictional map. As such, it's useful
if you give the players access to this
map as early as possible. Perhaps the
Fallen in the first encounter are carrying
it. Perhaps the first friendly character
they meet gives it to them. At which
point, simply pass them the map so
everyone can see it. Let them savour
the existential horror of having a perfect
map of their environment and then not
have a clue what is true and what isn't
and what anything actually means.
The exception to the above would be if
you're using a map your players are
aware of from a previous non-DIE game
they played with you. As such, using
their own recollections of the place may
be sufficient... though even then, if you
have the players’ own map of a dungeon
from a previous game, passing it back to
them is an incredibly powerful, creepy
moment. This is the reason why I've
been storing every bit of gaming tat my
social group produces, in case I ever
need it for something like this.
To stress: I would check with players
that they are okay with this level of
meta before progressing.
In terms of interpreting the maps, rather
than just basing it on what's in the map,
also pay attention to details in the
legend of a map. Often these are
numbers. As a number is related to each
player (the number of sides on their
dice) this may be used to hint towards
which rooms are important to each
player. Look for patterns and exploit
them. Even if the players never figure
out your mystic code, that you are
working according to a predefined
pattern will add to the reality of the
fantasy they are exploring.
4) JUST USE ANY FANTASY WORLD
Rather than using any specific dungeon
map and riffing on it (as above), or a
generic fantasy world, just drop people
into whatever fantasy world you like.
Middle-earth. Narnia. The Forbidden
Realms. Dragonlance’s Krynn.
Warhammer 40,000’s Necromunda.
Anything.
And I do mean any setting. Whedon’s
Sunnydale. George Lucas’s Tatooine.
Ron Gilbert’s Monkey Island.
No, I really do mean any setting. Dante’s
Hell. William Shakespeare’s Verona.
Jane Austen’s Bath.
No, I really do-do mean any setting.
Marco Polo’s China. Machievelli’s Italy.
Matthew, Mark, Luke or John’s
Jerusalem.
In other words, all worlds are fantasy
worlds, because when they’re written
down they’ve had to pass through their
creators’ heads – as in, they’ve had to
render a world imaginary to write it
down. To think is to imagine. That’s what
we do.
If there’s a place that seems to speak to
one of the persona’s obsessions
(especially the Master persona you’re
playing) then dropping the players in
this world and letting them explore can
be fun.
The story and encounters are generated
by intersecting the players’ obsessions
and desires with the fiction. Say you
drop the players in Middle-earth, in
Rivendell, during the council to decide
the future of the Ring. If a persona is
worried about their wedding, there’s
obvious connective tissue there.
Gandalf merges with traits from his
overbearing Grandfather who Knows
What’s Best For Him. The level of that is
entirely to taste – it can be incredibly
overt (Gandalf Actually Looks Like
Grandfather) or more subtle (Gandalf
works in a similar relationship).
This choice does mean that the setting
may simply be too large. This would be
great for a campaign (and skipping
between fantasy worlds, as fictionauts
is certainly something that I’d hope
someone does in DIE down the line) but
for a standalone scenario trying to come
to a climax, it may simply be too large.
You will especially have to think about
ways to bring the drama to a climax. A
useful choice is to limit the setting.
Rather than Middle-earth, you could
drop the players into the battle for
Helm’s Deep and set the whole scenario
in that relatively small locale.
There are many advantages to this
approach, but it’s also one which most
presents a world some personas may be
attracted to staying in. As it is clearly a
whole world rather than a small fictional
bottle. “Would you rather live on Earth or
Middle-earth?” is a question which is
certainly open for a game of DIE and, in
many ways, cuts close to the heart of
its themes.
It is also presented here to underline a
key point in the design: each of these
bottle kingdoms can be literally any size,
up to and including a copy of a whole
universe (or even multiverses). And
there’s not just one Narnia inside DIE -
there’s possibly a nearly endless
number of them…
DIE is big. It has room for all your
fantasies inside it. That’s kind of what
it’s for, for better or worse.
5) TAROT MAPS
This is a tactic that is more for players
who wish to improvise rather than plan,
though you can certainly plan for
including a tarot map section inside a
larger game.
I keep a copy of the tarot in my Box of
Crap, as it's just a useful atmospheric
tool. At moments in play when I want
more of a sense of gravitas or mystery, I
stop and draw a tarot card. If it inspires
me, I use it. If it doesn't inspire me, I go
“hmm” and pretend it's influenced what
I'm doing in some way that's entirely
mysterious to the players. For example, I
was playing at a con, and drew a card. I
drew the star, and took it entirely
literally, bringing in the con guest of
honour as an undead bartender.
There's a more elaborate approach, and
it's something I call tarot maps.
Here you lay cards face down to
simulate the map, and as the players
explore the dungeon, you flip them over.
You use the details on the card in
conjunction with the details of the
players, to inform whatever encounter.
At the very least, it can suggest
environment. If you know a lot about
tarot, use what you know. If you don’t,
use your Imagination.
There are two ways of creating a tarot
dungeon.
The first involves you laying all the
cards in the dungeon in one go, in a
pattern like so. This means the players
see what appears to be the entire size
of the dungeon in one go. Something
like:
The second involves adding cards one
at a time as the players progress, so
you only see areas adjacent to your
current one, and as you explore further,
you lay more cards. Something like this
(the face-up card shows where you are,
the face-down shows the adjacent
room):
With either option, you flip the card as
the players explore.
The advantage of the first one is
primarily that everyone knows the
shape of the dungeon before you start,
which creates a sense of dread and
anticipation in the player. The
advantage of the second one is that the
dungeon is indeterminate, giving you
the freedom to vary the size of the
dungeon on the fly.
If you choose the first one, lay cards in a
pattern you think is pretty. You will want
to lay at least two cards plus the
number of players (e.g. with three
players, you'll lay five cards). This is one
encounter per player, plus the first and
last rooms. You can happily add more,
as not every card needs to be an actual
encounter which delays the players.
Make things pretty, let them move
through areas quickly, and when you flip
a card which suggests an interesting
situation, make it a full encounter.
Progress here would look like this:
If you choose the second one, whenever
the players explore a card, deal
between zero and three cards around it
orthogonally. Do whatever makes the
map look cool, and decide whether you
want this direction to be a dead end or
not. Or if you want an actual system, try
the following: if the number is odd, there
is only one exit. If the number is even,
there are two exits. If the card is a major
arcana, and has a number of 11 or
higher, then it has three exits. If the
card is any other major arcana, it has no
other exits – as in, it is a dead end. If
there is no other way for the players to
explore, always at least add one exit,
unless it's the final encounter. (See the
next page.)

There is one thing which is open with
this second option: you can stack the
deck and make cool cards appear
exactly when you require.
Clearly, for those who do sleight of
hand, you're sorted. If not, here's the
two basic methods:
1) Just literally arrange the deck and
don't shuffle it. If you know the
number of cards you can play each
one in order at the right time.
2) Put the cards you want at the
bottom of the deck and deal from
there when you want a specific card.
Clearly the latter is rookie hour, and
players can spot it if they're watching
intently, which they shouldn't be. If
someone does and is rude enough to
call it, just tell them “Yes. I am. And?”
Depending on your instincts, you can
integrate it into the game. For example,
if they spot it, just deal the card to the
player and leave it in front of them with
no explanation. If they ever flip it, an
event related to the card happens. They
opened pandora’s box. In this case, the
punishment being fun and adding to the
horror atmosphere is very much the
point.
If you are going to stack the deck, it's
likely best used for the final encounter
card. Clearly, having a card that
provokes a gasp as they turn it over is a
good thing. DIE is totally a trashy
enough game to end on the death card,
though expect at least one player to
point out that it doesn't actually mean
literal death, but change. And really
smart players may realise that the
designers of the game know that too.
If you want ones to just mess with
people, the tower is a classic, and the
devil is also pretty nifty.
As a final option, you may wish to use a
reduced deck with just the Major
Arcana. This will leave to much more
obviously significant cards coming up,
which may add to the sense of
heightened melodrama.
6) RANDOMLY MAKE STUFF UP
If you look at your character-based
material and really see a natural series
of encounters you want to run, the map
may be a distraction from what you
want to do. There are two options here...
1) Generate the map on the fly. Give
directions and choices, but they lead
to wherever you want to go.
However, once you've “drawn” the
map, it exists.
For example, you have two
encounters left, and put the players
at a T-junction. The players go left.
The first of those two encounters is
at the end of the passageway. You
say there's a passageway on from
there. Whether the players carry on,
or go back and take the right from
the T-junction, they'll find the final
encounter there.
The question is one of solidity – once
you've said something is there, it's
there, and as long as you treat it as
real once created, you're fine.
2) Go full Alice and lean into the
inability to go back. Like Sarah in
Labyrinth, you just travel through
these symbolically loaded
encounters, and any attempt to
retrace your steps is frustrated. The
trick here is to make the inability of
the players to do that the entire
point, and one of your special
effects. “You can't go back” is worse
than bad – it's boring. Going back
down the corridor you've come from
and ending somewhere else is what
we're looking for. This is something
of a trippy game. Make it trippy.
Both these approaches are what is
generally referred to as Railroading – as
in, the players’ choices don’t matter.
This is generally frowned upon.
Especially for a one-off, I wouldn’t
dismiss it. Equally, I would suggest that
as long as players have plenty of
agency inside each of the encounters,
you’ll be fine. As DIE tends to encourage
encounters to be about choices, and the
GM literally not knowing what will
happen, a linear string of unpredictable
encounters does have certain
strengths.
7) USE A MAP GENERATOR
Hey! Look at this! A list of links!
https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-
Generator/
https://inkarnate.com/
https://watabou.itch.io/
https://worldspinner.com/
http://wiki.secretgeek.net/Category/gen
erators
https://twitter.com/ptychomancer/statu
s/980968298002006016
8) ACTUALLY PLAN LITERALLY
EVERYTHING
Okay. You're a classical RPG
Gamesmaster. You're worried about this,
and have no experience in improvised
games. You'd be happier if you actually
had a much stronger structure you
could add some more details to.
Do that. Just do it like you would a
standard role-playing game. You have
all the players’ personas and yours. You
have time between the first two
sessions to develop it. Do so.
If you're trying the one-off session, this
is trickier. You should develop your
Master persona, and then base the
backbone of the dungeon around it. You
will also likely select a set group and a
key character to lead to a tighter
conceptualised group which is of use in
the scenario you're running them
through. You can still add some details
from players, but this is decorating a
Christmas Tree rather than trying to
grow a Christmas Tree in front of them.
I'll give you a robust one for free: the
Master is a frustrated writer or fan, and
the dungeon you're going through is
their own hacky take on whatever
they're obsessed by.
This option is also here just so a player
who has chosen to read this will realise
that the GM may not actually be making
it all up. Hey, player. Don't be too sure
about anything, ever. This is fantasy.
You are not in control here. No one is.
9) SOME RANDOM METHOD OF YOUR
OWN
There’s some more of this in the Box of
Crap section, but if you like the tarot
dungeon, there’s lots of methods folks
have used to make random dungeons
from other objects. Or you can make up
one of your own. We’re collaborating on
this game, friend. I can’t wait to see
what you do.
10) COMBINE ANY OF THE ABOVE OR
ANYTHING ELSE
Including on the fly. Start with a
standard map and segue into weird non-
linear areas, then get the tarot cards
out for the finale. These are all valid
tactics.
It's worth noting that as DIE develops,
“alternate ways to generate content” is
certainly on the list of things I'll be
doing. The mystery box of the Box of
Crap is key.
Oh yeah - the Box of Crap!
THE BOX OF CRAP
When planning a game, you can
consider whether you wish to generate
a fake copy of the game DIE (aka the
Box of Crap). This is both a prop and a
gameplay prompt, and can be as much
or little effort as you wish.
First, find a box. It can be a mysterious
cool box. It can be a cardboard box. It
can even not be a box. Anything you can
put stuff inside is a suitable box for our
purposes.
Secondly, find some crap.
If you have a history of roleplaying,
throwing in some old supplements for
random games, character sheets,
campaign notes and maps is ideal. If you
don't have a history of roleplaying, then
putting childhood maps or stories you
made inside the box can serve the same
purpose. Random old maps from
holidays are good items. Maps of
famous locations everyone will know.
Old photos of childhood. Magazine
clippings. The result should look like a
somewhat geeky memory box.
If you have none of the above, you can
ask the players if they have anything
they're willing to share.
You can also buy random old
supplements/gamebooks cheap off
eBay, or in second-hand shops. You can
simply google “RPG maps” and save and
print out anything you find amusing. If
you want something novel, there’s
many online map generators. I linked to
some of them in the previous section. Go
print some out. Same goes for maps of
old real-world period cities.
If you want to fake distressing newly
printed out material, you can. There's
the old childhood trick of simply dousing
them in tea and putting them in the
oven.
Tarot cards? Great. Lob 'em in. Can't go
wrong with tarot, and you can always
use a tarot map.
Thirdly, put the crap in a box. Add the
dice, and shut it (perhaps even seal it).
I’ve written PROPERTY OF SOLOMON on
the side of mine in a marker pen, which
adds to the sense of a period artefact.
The point of this box is twofold – firstly,
as a mood-setting object to encourage
atmosphere and buy-in from the
players. You’ve put this box on the
table, and it adds a mood. It deliberately
tries to make old RPG stuff weird.
Secondly, as a divinatory device which
you will interpret as you explore the
fantasy world, to inspire the adventure
and challenges. Or, to use more
traditional RPG lingo, as your random
generators.
For example, you can literally randomly
flick through a book from the Box of
Crap and select whatever is in it. A D&D
monster manual is obviously the
archetypal one, but it could be anything.
Children's picture books played straight
can be creepy. I've used a con
programme / content guide as a
monster generator, for example.
If you have miniatures or similar
monster tokens in the Box of Crap,
drawing one randomly also works. A bag
full of tokens and miniatures isn't a bad
idea. You get to pull it out and be
dramatic. If your players are up for
boundary-pushing material – which you
should check before playing – this also
works well if you have the players' old
RPG material. Pulling out a player's old
character sheet from a previous game,
and then using an awful echo of that
loved character as the basis of a
character can be very creepy.
To stress, this is clearly extra-credit
behaviour. Playing without an explicit
prop will work perfectly. The Box of Crap
is most used when playing with the
alternate-world-generator ideas. It’s a
source of objects to play with and
interpret.
You can also add things to the Box of
Crap between sessions, if you’re feeling
sneaky. In one memorable game players
said they were all working in a real
Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, so I
quickly downloaded the restaurant’s
actual menu to use as a random
encounter generator. Fear The Baked
Aubergine.
I AM TOTALLY LOST
Oh, it’s okay, Kitten. I love you. The
following three set scenarios in the next
section give an example of how some of
the above can work. If you want a
couple more worked examples, go to the
essay on “Story Logic” which gives you
some more advice on planning.
Feel better?
PURRRRRRRRR
Good kitten.
DIE is also meant to intensely
personalise a player’s choices,
which means that a traditional
scenario doesn’t really work. What
follows are three examples of how,
by constraining the questions at the
opening, you can limit options
enough so you don’t have to create
something entirely on the fly, while
still including a lot of space for group
customisation.
“Con Quest” can work well in a single
session, and expand into a multi-
session game.
“Development Hell” includes some
suggestions on how to constrain it
enough to run well in a one-off game,
but is likely to be more suited to the
start of a standard 2-4 session DIE
game.
“Christmas Knights” is a quick third
scenario, written the morning before
release after being urged to do so by
the DIE Discord. It's less polished, but
gives the core of a particularly grim
Christmas adventure.
Feel free to use these as templates
for making your own scenarios,
either to share with friends or for
your own peace of mind before
running a game.
DIE: CON QUEST
PREPARATION
As well as the usual, a convention map.
If you’re at a con, use the map of the
con you’re at. If you’re not, use any con
map you can find and/or download. It
tends to work best with a con you’ve
been at, so you can easily visualise and
explain it.
PERSONA GENERATION
Each persona will take a set role. The
Master plays the Editor.
• 2 players: Comic Publisher and
Writer (feel free to tweak Writer to
“Cartoonist” in a two-player game).
• 3 players: add Artist.
• 4 players: add Fan.
• 5 players: add Journalist.
Ask the below questions, in order. Skip
all questions related to a persona who
isn’t in the game. (i.e. in a two-player
game, only ask the Publisher and Writer
questions.)
• Who wants to be a Writer? A
Publisher? An Artist? A Fan? A
Journalist?
• Take a second and each think about
that. What sort of person could that
be?
• Writer – Congratulations! You’re the
creator of a very successful book.
What’s it called? What is <Book>’s
genre?
• You’re the Publisher of <Book>. What’s
the name of your company?
• How come you own the rights to
<Book>, not the Writer?
• Publisher – Do you care about
comics?
• Writer – What’s your greatest
strength as a Writer?
• Publisher – What’s the Writer’s
greatest weakness they just can’t
admit?
• I used to be an Editor at <Company>
working on <Book>.
• Publisher – Why did you fire me?
• Publisher – So what’s the reason
we’re still in social contact and
friendly?
• Writer – What was the worst thing
about working with me?
• Artist – You’re the co-creator of
<Book>.
• Artist – When did you quit working on
<Book>… and why?
• Artist – When did your art start getting
worse?
• Artist – Why have you come back for
another run?
• Writer – <Book> is your big hit. Your
only hit. Why?
• Fan – You’re a fan of <Book>. Why are
professionals cool with you hanging
with them?
• Fan – You want to work in the
industry. What job do you want to do?
• <Whoever has that job> – Does the
Fan have any talent in your field
whatsoever?
• Fan – Who do you think is most
important to the success of <Book>?
• Fan – <Writer>’s new run (with Artist).
Why is it not as good as the old stuff?
• Journalist – What sort of sites do you
work for? Why have you been invited
to hang out with this bunch from
<Company> comics?
• Publisher – Why do you hold a grudge
against Journalist?
• Writer– Why do you sneakily respect
this journalist?
• Fan – Why have you leaked rumours
to the Journalist?
 • Journalist – Why do you think <Writer>
is actually just bad?
• Artist – Who was your best friend and
why did you stop talking?
• <The person the artist has called out>
– do you miss them?
• Around Table – Who is your hero
figure?
• Around Table – Why do you think the
TV show of <Book> didn’t happen?
This should give a fairly robust basis for
a game of DIE. If doing a longer game,
feel free to ask more questions.
CHARACTER GENERATION
If you’re playing at a con, the personas
get together to play a game in the room
you’re actually doing the game in In Real
Life. If you’re not at a con, choose a
room that’s a good distance away from
the biggest hall in the con. The dice are
distributed as so…
• Writer: Godbinder
• Publisher: Neo
• Artist: Emotion Knight
• Fan: Fool
• Journalist: Dictator
For a one-off, I’d suggest using the Light
character sheets. If you want to really
make the game go quickly, you can pre-
generate characters with choices filled
in and just hand them out.
INTO DIE
The players will arrive in a warped
mirror-dimension version of the room
they’re playing the game in. No one else
is there. The windows are opaque. The
colours are just off. Textures are rough.
Look too long at something and you
start to feel vertigo. The Editor should
instantly grab the D20, and then use a
Cheat Token to teleport away saying “It
worked. Meet you in <Whatever the main
hall is>.”
Give them a little while to get used to
their situation, and then a group of
Fallen enter. They’re the Big Name
Creator and a group of Wannabe Hacks
– writers with blades for hands. Have
one Wannabe Hack for each player. If a
rival creator has not turned up in the
world generation, use one (or more!) of
the personas’ hero figures as the
inspiration for the Big Name Creator. If
no other motivation has presented
itself, the Big Name Creator is angry at
them for plagiarising them.
SACKED WRITERS’ STATS
Stats: Dexterity 0
Defence: 1
Abilities: Close Combat Specialist
(slicing arms, painful prose)
THE BIG NAME CREATOR STATS
Stats: Strength 4, Constitution 4
Dexterity 0
Defence: 2
Abilities: Every second round can vomit
a flood of inky blood, which can hit
anyone directly in front of them (Special:
if wounded, target misses a turn.)
REACHING THE MAIN HALL
The players are free to explore the rest
of the con – use the con map to chart
the exploration. Bar being in a warped
hell dimension, the biggest difference is
what’s being advertised. All the
exhibitions are for the film version of the
<Book>.
The main problem in navigating areas is
that the con (and the streets around it)
are filled with devoted, dead-eyed
zombie-fans of the <Book>. If left to their
own devices, they try to cram their way
into the main hall, forming huge crushes
of bodies. If they become aware of the
players, those in the locality will attempt
to collect souvenirs. Like signatures, or
fingernails. They are not actively hostile
– they actually deeply, intensely love the
players.
THE FANS’ STATS
Stats: Dexterity 0
Defence: 1
Abilities: Aggressive hug (Special: the
Fan holds onto the player, causing a
disadvantage on all actions until they’re
beaten away. If a character has a
number of fans equal to their strength
holding on, the character suffers one
wound per turn as the Fans start to
affectionately tear them apart.)
The encounter is simply “how to get to
the main hall”. See what the players
think is up.
For a longer game, you use the con map
as inspiration for encounters in any
given area, merging it with a detail from
the personas’ backgrounds to link to
make it specific. Always feel free to ask
further questions to get more
information during play. Asking
questions about specific characters
from the hit book, and then immediately
including it in the world, is a useful
approach.
For example:
“You enter the cosplay area. Hmm.
Writer – who’s the most popular
character in the comic?”
“Oh, Captain Stardust.”
“The area is full near perfect Captain
Stardusts. Each one has a single,
uncanny error. One has no eyelashes.
One casts no shadow. One has fingers
at the end of their tongue. They turn to
you with angry, demanding eyes and
say: which of us is the best?”
THE MAIN HALL
When they reach the main hall the
Players will find the Editor holding off a
horde of Fans who the Editor can’t quite
control.
Since being sacked, the Editor has had a
terrible time. The comic was the
highlight of their life, and this is an
attempt to get the band back together.
If you’re looking for a simple villain, have
the Editor be a dominating monster who
has brought people here to serve them
in making this world right. They firmly
believe that, when everyone is on their
side, they’ll be able to solve this little
zombie problem. Think “what’s the
worst portrait of an egotistical Editor?”
and go into that.
If you’re looking for something more
sympathetic, lean into the cry-for-help
aspect of this setup. He’s sure they can
make this work if they just stay here –
they made such a mess of it in the real
world. This version of the Master will
realise that he can’t do it himself, and he
needs them. If a player helps the
Master, the Master can use Cheat
Tokens to create a version of their
shared world that is far more striking…
but it should also remind the players
what they’ve left behind. If they create
the magical forests of their comic, have
the skies above remind the artist of a
trip back home with their family when
they were young. If the group is having
internal debates over whether to go
home or not, the Master is likely to go
passive – the Master will support
whatever most people think. If the group
is at an impasse, it’s also likely the
Master will spend Cheat Tokens to
attack and kill the dissenting members.
THE END GAME
As per usual in DIE, ask how the
experience changed them (or what their
life in the fantasy world would be like)
then add a grace note. If they leave, it’s
likely your note will include the
supernatural experience creeping into
the book’s growing success in the real
world. If they stay, dwell on what
they’ve left behind – perhaps most
useful is the idea that in the real world
the book becomes something no one
cares about. Or, even worse, perhaps
they make a terrible movie version.
Shudder.
Thanks to playtesters: Jody Houser,
Amy Dallen, Sam De Leve, Jim Zub,
Shaun Manning.
DIE: DEVELOPMENT HELL
PREPARATION
This scenario is primarily designed to be
played online, so the player’s situation
mirrors the persona’s. If you play online,
the DIE site links to some useful tools for
online-only play, so look there. At time of
writing https://rollforyour.party is our
preferred online dice table. The site also
includes backdrops to add to your dice
room, and links to shared online sheets
you can copy to your own Google drive
and share with the players.
This game is likely best in multiple
sessions. If you want to run in a single
session, you’ll find some advice at the
end about how to cut things.
PERSONA GENERATION
Explain the following to the players:
You’re all on an indie game team
working on the Creative Director’s
masterwork. The project has been in
progress for years, and the company
has been in crunch (basically punishing
overtime) for most of the last year and
is running out of money. Many people
have left the team. It’s sort of becoming
an industry joke. Many people think the
game won’t come out. You feel there is
at least another year of development
ahead of you. You’re having a video
conference meeting to do a team
exercise to try and increase morale – to
be specific, by playing some old nineties
role-playing game.
Each persona will take a set role in the
company. The GM will play the Creative
Director, who’ll end up as The Master.
• 2 Players: Design Lead and QA
[“Quality Assurance”].
• 3 Players: Add Star Coder.
• 4 Players: Add Marketing.
• 5 Players: Add Intern.
If players are unsure what each job
entails generally, explain it to them. If
you don't know, Google it or ask another
player to explain it. As long as you're all
on the same page, it's golden. I suspect
the only one which may be problematic
is Quality Assurance which is basically
"finding bugs in the game".
Ask the below questions, in order.
Questions list who they’re to be directed
at. Some questions are only asked if
certain personas are in the games.
Those which don’t have a specific target
should be split fairly between players.
You can feel free to ask certain
questions to multiple players if you want
to get more answers.
• Who wants to be the code lead? The
junior coder? QA? Marketing? The
Intern?
Take a second and each think about
that. What sort of person could that be?
• What’s the genre of the game?
• What are the big bugs in the game?
• What’s the hold up in development?
• Whose fault do you think it is?
• [To everyone] Why did you take this
job?
• You’re a fan of the Creative Lead.
Why do people like their games?
• You think the Creative Lead is over-
rated. Why do people hate their
games?
• What classic game does the Creative
Lead always go on about, in terms of
capturing its essence, its soul?
• [For a longer multisession game] Ask
the above question to two other
players.
• [To Everyone] This endless crunch is
brutal. How has it negatively
affected your home life?
• [Design] What are your influences as
a designer?
• [Design] Design Lead is your job title.
You’re not actually doing much
design work. You’re really just
getting people to do stuff for you.
How do you feel about this?
• [Coder] You solved a huge technical
problem that was holding up the
game. What was it?
• [Coder] Recently, your work has
fallen apart. What in your personal
life has distracted you from making
more progress?
• [QA] Many people in QA get into it to
try and move to a different part of
the company. What job has the
Creative Lead promised you can
move onto soon?
• [QA] You personally found a major
problem in the game, and arguably
saved the company. What was it?
• [QA] How did you feel when your
excellence in finding this problem
was rewarded by keeping you in QA?
• [Marketing/PR] What’s the worst
thing you’ve done to get good
coverage for the game? Are you
ashamed by it?
• [Marketing/PR] Do you care about
games at all?
• [Intern] How did you get a job at the
company? Are you qualified for it?
• [Intern] There’s a reason why you
shouldn’t be working at this
company, and if it was revealed
you’d be in big trouble. What is it?
• [Designer] Who are you jealous of on
the team?
• [QA] Who causes most of your
problems?
• [Star Coder] You are objectively
hugely talented – who do you have a
tendency to condescend to?
• [To Person Who They Look Down On]
Do you know about this?
• [Marketing/PR] You have a secret
about another team member. Which
member?
• [To the person] What’s the secret?
• [Intern] Who got blamed for your
biggest fuck up? What was it? Why
didn’t you come clean?
• [Everyone] Everyone gets profit
share on this. If the game launches
and is a success, how do you see
the future?
• [Everyone] Do you think the game
has any chance of launch.
This should give a fairly robust basis for
a game of DIE. As always, ask more
questions as you wish and to pursue
interesting angles.
THE MASTER’S MOTIVATION
The Creative Director wants to finish the
game, and doesn’t want to live in a
world where they can’t. They’re
desperate enough to look for investors
everywhere, and hit upon the possibility
of DIE. They’re aware that this seems
lunacy, but they’ll have to try it. They
have come to think of the people who
provided DIE to him as “Angel Investors.
Or something like angels, anyway.”
They believe that by defeating the
challenges that confront the game in
the fantasy, they can create and live in
a world where the game is finished.
They are correct. This is “Let’s pivot into
VR” gone diabolical.
While extreme, the Master’s level of
sympathy is tweakable. Perhaps they
have a very real reason to want to finish
the game quickly – terminal disease is
an obvious one, but there’s lots more.
However, there is megalomania at the
core of it all, and their actions are
deeply abusive to the staff.
Depending on the players’ answers and
your instincts, there are many paths.
You can play this as a genuine visionary
who has lost track of the world. You can
play this as a shallow parasite with no
care for other humans. You can play it
as Colonel Kurtz as a game dev. Have
fun.
CHARACTER GENERATION
Explain to the players that the Creative
Director has a morale building exercise
he wants everyone to be involved with.
When we’re months behind schedule,
they may not be impressed with this,
but it’s compulsory. The Creative Lead
has got everyone into the group
conferencing software to have this
game.
The roles are distributed as so…
• Design Lead: Godbinder
• QA: Emotion Knight –
specifically a Vigilance Knight
• Junior Coder: Neo
• Marketing: Dictator
• Intern: Fool
If the Designer is particularly (ahem)
dictatorial and the Marketing player is a
little friendlier, you can swap their roles.
INTO DIE
Players arrive in a basically blank
wireframe, with just the dice as the only
solid objects in the universe. The
Creative Lead grabs it and uses a cheat
token to teleport away. From then on,
they interact as a voice of god from the
sky, or pop-up text in the top right of a
player’s vision.
The world starts to flicker into existence
– as in, a 21st century earth reality. It
gets almost all the way – and then
starts to visibly crash and fail. The bugs
proceed to arrive, attacking the players.
Use the nature of the bugs mentioned
from the QA’s answers in character
generation to personalise them. Have
one bug for each of the players, plus
one of the big crash bugs. These bugs
are our Fallen.
BUGS
Stats: Dexterity 0
Defence: 1
Specials: Ranged Combat Specialist
(blasts of bad data)
CRASH BUGS
Stats: Strength 4, Constitution 4
Dexterity 0
Defence: 2
Abilities: Every second round can cause
a fissure in reality, threatening to tear
apart reality nearby. (Special: target
suffers disadvantage on all actions for
one round.)
After the bugs are defeated, reality
collapses back to the wireframe. A
whiteboard appears, with a message
from the Creative Director. In their
handwriting is written the legend…
“Genius Steals. We need to find the
essence. “
And beneath it is a list of sentences,
each of which refers to one of the
Creative Director’s inspirations. You can
also add other objectives to this board,
if the personas’ backgrounds suggest
them. These must all be completed to
finish the mission. When each is
completed, they are erased from the
board.
Present the players with a menu system
in front of their eyes, which gives them
the option of which of the tasks to
attempt. Whenever anyone selects one,
they are all transported to the relevant
challenge.
If you’re playing a multiple session
game, end the first session when they
pick an option and find themselves
transported to the game in question.
Yes, this scenario is primarily based
around dropping our party into dark
echoes of beloved videogames.
BUGHUNT
Each mission involves the personas
being transferred into a world that is
based on the game in question. If it’s a
game with maps, locate the most
famous one online, and use it as the
inspiration for the environment they’re
exploring. Their mission is to secure
“The Essence”.
The best tactic is to give an open-ended
objective inspired by the nature of the
game they’re dropped into, and then
leave the players to work out a way to
achieve the goal. If they’re dropped into
Mario, locating which castle the
“Princess” is in may work, or if dropped
into Tetris, finding a way to make the
blocks “disappear”. Sometimes your
players will choose a game which has a
perfect in-game reason – for example, in
the playtest, the game was Monkey
Island – whose opening segment is
about proving yourself to be a pirate.
The players were dropped onto the
game’s opening island and then left to
work out how on earth to convince
everyone they’re actually a pirate.
DIE is not necessarily a combat game.
Dropping the players into Halo does not
mean fighting every single inch of the
game map. It is best to make sure the
players know their goal in the game as
soon as possible. Don’t be afraid to just
tell them, in the way a videogame
objective works. The flexibility and
imagination in how they do it is the
thing. If the game has an actual map
you’re using, giving the players the map
as soon as possible is a good idea. It will
give them ideas for possible routes to
pursue to succeed in their mission. The
Neo’s AI is likely a useful source of info,
or the Godbinder’s gods.
Unless all the players are extremely
familiar with the game in question, be
aware that specific riffs may not land.
As such, lean into the general ideas of
the world which people do know. Don’t
be afraid to actively explain the vibe of
the world – in fact, having personas who
know about the world explain it to
personas who don’t is a very useful
tactic.
Depending on your mood, you can either
have the world echo the original game’s
aesthetic (as in, weird pixelated 16-bit
graphic people walking around for an
early 90s classic) or present it as if it’s
actually real. Or both. Glitch aesthetic
descriptions are likely useful.
Most of all, work echoes of a persona’s
real life in to the game, as per a usual
game of DIE. In our playtest, Governor
Marley of Melee Island was the QA
lead’s ex-husband, and was made to
walk the plank off a cliff in front of a
crowd of baying software pirates to
prove the QA was a pirate. There’s lots
of fun to riff on videogames in this
scenario, but any chance to bring it
back to the persona’s lives is important.
Inserting more bugs as antagonists or a
lurking threat is also useful.
RELEASE
After all the checklist is crossed out,
reality tries to launch again… and works.
The players are in a seemingly 100%
accurate mirror of reality. They may see
an occasional glitch, but it’s near
perfect. They are outside the
headquarters of their company… which
is considerably fancier than in real life.
Inside they find the Master, who
explains everything. Everyone has
equity in the company, so we all need to
vote to stay in this perfect recreation of
earth. Encourage cynicism in the
players regarding how “perfect” it
would be. The Master will likely say any
glitches are just teething problems. He
clearly doesn’t quite understand how
this all works, but in this new universe,
the game is complete. They can all move
on with their lives and bask in the glow
of this huge creative success.
Of course, if they don’t all come to an
agreement, the universe will crash and
they’ll all die. They could all agree to go
back to reality, but then the game
wouldn’t be finished. We wouldn’t do
that, right? Right?
This plays out like a standard DIE game,
in terms of reaching agreement, one
way or another. The Master will be
reluctant to escalate to violence, but
certainly will if it looks like agreement is
impossible and reality starts to fall
apart. It’s likely that some players will
want to tweak the world in a significant
way. Assume “enormous riches from the
success of our game” is a given. Each
cheat token can be used to offer one
“wish” to each persona. Unless your
Master is especially sympathetic, the
Master will not accept anything which
stops the world being recognisably
earth – art is only appreciated in its
original context, so if we turn the world
into a techno-utopia it misses the whole
point of the endeavour.
THE END GAME
Is per standard DIE game. You will likely
want to encourage one persona’s scene
to talk about the actual fate of the game
– was it finished?
If the personas choose to stay, it’s a
little unusual in that the world they’re on
is basically earth. Basically. Bar the
things which aren’t quite… right. Your
creepy extra note is likely to underline
that. “It’s a perfect life. You barely even
notice the world slow down when you’re
in a crowd any more. Barely.” is likely a
useful angle to take.
THE SINGLE GAME SESSION
The game will be simplified hugely by
choosing the game the Creative Director
is obsessed with yourself. That means
you can prep assets in advance. Instead
of asking about the game’s identity, ask
the players how they feel about the
Creative Director’s game in questions to
seed the game as a key idea.
The first encounter should be simplified
to a single crash bug, to introduce the
mechanics and allow the players to get
to the trip into the Creative Director’s
inspiration game as quickly as possible.
Then just ensure there’s time for the
final confrontation. I’d also suggest you
use the Light Character sheets. Fill in
the archetypes in advance if you really
want it to move.
Thanks to Playtesters: David Walker,
Puckett, Matt Phillips
DIE: CHRISTMAS KNIGHTS
INTRO
As the Arcana was set to be released in
the week of Christmas, there was talk
on the DIE RPG Discord of how you’d run
a Christmas game. I immediately had my
core idea, and then realised I could write
it up in a very brief form on Monday
morning and get into the Arcana for
release at noon.
As such, it’s more sparse than the other
scenarios here, and is written to be
expanded a little by you, the brave and
noble Master. It also has not been
playtested at all. It is designed really for
a single seasonal session, and breaks a
lot of DIE’s usual story structure.
PREPARATION
To play as written, you will require as
many D8s as there are non-GM players
and at least as many different
Christmas cards as there are players.
Content Warning: Parent Figure Death.
There are some suggestions at the end
on how to run one with a less grim
element at the end.
PERSONA GENERATION
The scenario is aggressively about a
family at Christmas. It doesn’t have to
be a blood family – it doesn’t necessarily
need to be a family that cares about or
observes Christmas, but that is the core
buy-in required from the players. Before
play, check if players are okay with
doing a scenario with Parent Figure
death in too.
Explain this to the players: you are a
group of family members who have got
together on Christmas Eve. The parental
figure is going to run a game for them,
for the first time.
Ask questions to discover who is who in
the family. Children. Grandparents.
Spouses. Siblings. When there’s a
suitable space in the relationships,
insert your Master as the parental figure
everyone looks up to.
Ask each player why you respect or love
the Master’s persona.
Alternate the questions “Why have you
always previously liked Christmas
time?” or “Why have you always
previously hated Christmas time?”
around the room.
Tell the players that the parental figure –
the Master – is dying. Ask each player
how they responded when they
discovered this would be the last
Christmas with this parental figure.
Say that this has caused huge strain in
the family. Ask each persona which
other persona they’ve fallen out with?
Why? When a few players have said
they’d fallen out with someone, narrow
the question to “Why have you fallen out
with a specific non-picked persona?” to
ensure each persona has beef with a
different persona.
At this point some players may have
expressed a certain emotion on the
emotion wheel strongly – anger, grief
and fear are likely ones. Ask the players
who you don’t connect that strongly
with a single emotion whether they feel
more X emotion or Y emotion and why (X
and Y being unused emotions from the
wheel). Strong negative relations are
also good – people who are repressing
feeling a specific emotion.
Ask some silly questions about who
does what at Christmas and what
presents they have got for folks, if any.
Ask further questions until the group
feels grounded enough to continue.
THE MASTER’S MOTIVATION
The Master is dying. They know they
won’t be with the family for Christmas
next year. They want to be able to go to
the grave knowing the family will be
okay without them – to see them pull
together. It’s not just for their own
peace of mind – they also want to show
the family how much they need each
other and can pull together. This is a
story about using fantasy to prepare
people for the hardships of the real
world.
The endgame is different from normal –
do not reveal the “everyone has to
agree to go home” rule, as it is not here.
Regular DIE players may presume it.
Others may believe this is a way to save
the figure from death – this is also an
idea you may wish to seed in the game,
but is simply untrue.
CHARACTER GENERATION
All players are Emotion Knights. Fill in
the emotion for each Knight, based upon
which emotion was ascertained in the
Persona generation. So the player who
expresses anger most is the Rage
Knight, and so on. Alternatively, it could
be the emotion they are least capable of
showing – so a character who has their
anger locked down and doesn’t express
any of it is the Rage Knight.
INTO DIE
The players arrive in a warped version
of the room they’re presently in. Resting
on the nearest surface are as many
unopened Christmas cards as there are
players. In front of the players there are
as many small prettily wrapped boxes
as there are players, each with their
name on. Inside each box are the
players’ D8s, which transform each
individual the second they touch their
own dice.
The Master picks up their own dice
(which was resting on the table), but
before they can speak a huge red
dragon talon reaches from behind them
pulls them through a hole in space.
Writing appears on the wall in blood-red
berry juice, as if written by an invisible
hand: “SAVE ME.” Use the scrawled
berry messages to give challenges or
hints to players from this point onwards.
THE CARDS
After sufficient screaming, the
characters now have to open their in-
game cards, one at a time. When the
first one is opened, pass one of the pre-
prepared real-world Christmas cards
and put it on the table.
The whole group is transported into a
different realm. When they complete the
encounter, they are transformed back
to the room, and can select another
card.
Use the card as inspiration for the
encounter. Look at the imagery, subvert.
Feel free to introduce other classic
Christmas elements. The encounter
should be about that persona’s problem
with another persona, and them
reaching some level of understanding or
reconciliation. Equally, as each player is
connected to an emotion, the Creative
Violence is a good tool for overcoming
seemingly intractable difficulties. Use
standard monster stats from the main
manual if you need them, but hopefully
you don’t. Remember to always draw
from anything fun mentioned in Persona
generation.
The aim of each scene is emotional
connection and pulling together in some
way. It doesn’t have to be as simple as a
cheesy reconciliation… but this is a
Christmas scenario. Don’t be afraid of it
either.
If you want to be really fancy, in the
moment before the Character
Generation starts, you could take a new
card, put it in an envelope, and address
it to the Persona, and then pass it to the
Persona’s player in question at the right
moment.
THE DRAGON APPEARS
When all the encounters are completed,
the cards magically fly up the chimney…
and the house is torn apart, revealing
the dragon, looming above them. Add
seasonal elements to the dragon –
already red, consider the greens.
Consider the scenery being a forest of
conifers, all decked out in lights, all on
fire.
This is the final encounter….
FIGHTING THE DRAGON
Stats: Strength 4, Constitution 4
Defence: 2
Special: every second round it can
breathe fire, attacking every person in
its firing line with a 3 dice pool attack
with Special (if this attack does a
wound, the target is on fire and suffers 1
wound every round until the flames are
extinguished). The dragon cannot be
killed until everyone has joined in the
fight against it. If all the players attack
simultaneously, they can add their dice
pools together. (So three knights with
Strength 4 each would roll 12 dice in
their attack pool.)
If players completely fail to get it
together, the Master enters on a sleigh,
dressed as Santa Claus and destroys
the dragon, rising any dead players by
spending Cheat Tokens. Otherwise, the
Master arrives when the Dragon is
defeated.
The Master explains the reason for
bringing them here – that they wanted
to see them pull together, to know that
they could live. The Master isn’t afraid of
dying. They’re afraid of being away from
family, and so knowing how strong they
all are is a huge source of peace. If
pressed on how this even works, the
Master is as confused as they are. The
game arrived in the post.
If the players completely didn’t come
together in any way, you flip the other
way – as in, this was about the Master’s
hope that under pressure they would
come together and realise how good
they are for each other. This will likely
prompt some more emotional scenes
too.
Which leaves the question – how do we
get home?
The forest creatures come forth
carrying tables and masses of food of
every sort.
The Master says: we have to finish
dinner.
The family has their last Christmas
together in this magical glen together.
THE END GAME
Afterwards, when they've returned
home, ask how did the experience of
that last Christmas change them, and
then add a note in response as
standard.
TWEAKS
Even when leaning seasonally
sentimental, my tendency is to go with
awful grim truths. You or your players
may not want to go there, and I don’t
blame you. If you want to tweak this to
be less Oh God Parents Dying, make it be
a family that is estranged in some way,
with the core question of “Why have you
stopped calling your family” to each
member. The game is then about the
Master wanting the family to be able to
come together at all.
The game is written to run with Emotion
Knights only to simplify things a little, as
well as the pun. It should work with the
other archetypes, which you can use
instead if you want. Clearly the
Godbinder’s gods should be based on
whatever Christmas figures you like –
Santa Claus, etc (Thanks, Kevin From
the Discord for suggesting that.).
Thanks to the DIE Discord for making me
write this. Thanks a lot.
The following are write-ups of actual
DIE games run by people who used
the Beta. These are designed to
function like the hypothetical
example in the main rules, in terms
of showing the sort of thought a
Master applies to a group to
generate an adventure. I was
originally planning to write a bunch
myself, then realised that…
1. Having other people do it shows a
variety of different sorts of
people approaching a similar
problem, and showing there are
many ways to do it. We can
highlight different levels of
experience, different styles of
GMing and so on.
2. if I pay other people to do it, it
means I don’t have to write it,
and I can spend more time
browsing Skaven on eBay.
So I did that, though had one of my
own written up anyway, just to
pretend I don’t spend all my time on
the aforementioned eBay browsing
for the aforementioned Skaven.
But I do.
EXAMPLE GAME: "(UNFINISHED)"
THE GROUP
The personas were a group of university
students who played D&D to
decompress during studies; all four
dropped out of university for their own
reasons and went on with life, largely
losing touch. That was 15 years ago. One
of them, (seemingly) by coincidence,
runs across another at work, and
suggests they sit down to catch up,
offering to run the rest of their
abandoned campaign so that it may
finally find completion.
Theo, a Dictator
Barista, studied Political Science.
Wanted to change the world, but now
sees politics as corrupt and literature as
the only way to reach people. Writes
when he's not working (mostly
speculative fiction, he idolizes Harlan
Ellison), but is consumed by self-doubt
and hasn't finished a single thing.
Asexual. Used to GM for the group.
Core Drive: wants to change the world,
or at least a small part of it, with his
writing.
Secondary Elements: grassroots activist
and organizer. Loves the city park and a
nearby cafe in which he writes. Never
lets his inner frustrations show. Soft-
spoken, approachable, and patient.
David, a Loathing Knight
Bioengineering student who felt
overwhelmed by his studies and his
girlfriend’s (Dana's) dropping out; now a
fast-order chef at a diner. Has been
Dana's partner for 17 years, but they
never officially married. Recently
suffered a debilitating wrist injury – isn't
physically able to work and can't claim
compensation. Frustrated by the
situation. Used to play a Paladin.
Core Drive: hates the loss of income,
loss of financial security, loss of some
connection with Dana, and loss of
control over his arm; due to problematic
parenting, believes this makes him a
bad provider and lesser man.
Secondary Elements: genuinely loves
Dana. Essentially an optimist
underneath all that bitterness and
resentment. Gamer, and competitive
about it.
Dana, a Fool
Studied Art History and was top of her
class, dropped out because she felt
trapped and wanted life to be simpler
and to have more freedom. While David
was working, they had enough to live
well; with his current condition, she's
had to find a job – waitstaff at a local
bar. She's not thrilled about it, but works
hard. David is distrustful of the clientele
and the friends she might make there,
and she's growing slightly distant in
instinctual response to his negativity.
Used to play a Druid.
Core Drive: to find elements of freedom
and joy in her life and not be tied down.
Secondary Elements: also genuinely
loves David. Also an optimist, with her
heart on her sleeve. Also a gamer, but a
casual one. Still draws and paints in her
off hours. Wants David to work through
his baggage.
Ben, a Master
Studied Classics, and is the only one of
the group to return to studying,
eventually earning a degree and
becoming a therapist. Had an existential
crisis when a patient who was making a
lot of progress was killed in a car
accident immediately following a
session. Ben feels that everything he (or
anyone else) can do to make the world a
better place is inevitably undone by
entropy. He didn’t give into the
temptation of self-serving nihilism,
mostly because he gave into the
temptation of DIE instead. Gay,
aromantic, single. Used to play a
Sorcerer.
Core Drive: to create a better world
where entropy has no hold.
Secondary Elements: wants to be in the
company of people who understand him.
Wants to be understood, full stop. Loves
museums. Still loves tabletop games.
Has a need to be in control but would
never admit just how deep that need
really goes, not even to himself.
Assigning the Knight and the Fool to
David and Dana respectively felt very
natural – David is in a very emotionally
overwhelmed state, he has a lot of
emotions to purge and work through, so
this fitted him well; Dana wants to have
as much freedom as possible, and the
Fool, depending on how one is to play
the Fool, can be that. To have the Fool
be the ultimate blessing to a character
(Dana was thrilled to get to play the
part) was wonderful to see.
Theo was more difficult. I had
considered giving him Godbinder, due to
his political interests. He doesn’t want
to force people to do things, he wants to
inspire and have conversations. I went
with Dictator for two reasons:
1. In character, Ben wants to tempt
Theo and has misjudged him. He
thought Theo would enjoy having the
direct power to change people’s
behaviour. If he’d known Theo better,
he would’ve given him Godbinder –
but like anyone, Ben is flawed, he’s
made a mistake here.
2. Out of character, I was concerned
that adding the gods would make
Ben’s world, its near-emptiness
being one of its defining features,
feel less abandoned – and that
playing the gods as NPCs might take
too much attention away from David
and Dana, and make their players
(both relatively new to tabletop
RPGs) feel sidelined. I was also
interested in seeing how a person
who doesn’t want to exact such
control over other people would
respond to being given the powers
of the Dictator – do they change their
mind once they see the results, or do
they double down on their morals?
THE PREP
Prep was interesting – the focus was
more on the atmosphere and experience
of playing the game than about
preparing stats, maps, and so on. It was
an exercise of learning and leaning into
my strengths.
In the past, every time that I’ve run
games with a lot of narrative and NPC
preparation, the preparation didn’t
survive the first encounter with the
players and went out the window; yet
every time I’ve run games entirely
improvisationally, I tripped over small
problems and had nothing to fall back
on. For this campaign, I found a fairly
good balance between the two.
After persona generation – which was
impromptu, but the spontaneity created
really rich characters, nobody was
caught overthinking things – I jotted
down certain key points that helped
shape setting. Persona generation was
always going to be my starting point for
ideas; after all, this story is about these
characters. All four studied in
intellectual and cultural fields, all four
were used to paper as a part of their
joined lives (university work, exams,
character sheets, the university
degrees they never received, Theo’s
writing, Dana’s sketchbook, Ben’s
notepad, and so on) and with that in
mind, I started preparing ideas for a
world in which the look of the Fallen and
the imagery of the world inevitably
keeps returning to a motif of paper. By
simply asking who Dana’s favourite
artist is (Dalí), I immediately had a
wonderful catalogue of ideas of things
to put into the game. There were a few
paintings my mind immediately went to
that were well-known enough but not
quite as overused as The Persistence of
Memory. I let some other surrealistic art
influence the atmosphere as well, David
Lynch in particular.
I purposely didn’t draw up maps. One of
the personas’ shared problems is a lack
of direction and connection, leading
them into distancing themselves. To
convey some of that emotional
disorientation, I wanted to take away
their ability to see concretely where
they were in relation to anything else, at
least initially. For one later scene that
was a bit more contained, the only one
that was, I did draw out a small room
layout, but did it freehand during the
game – I wanted the players to feel like
they hadn’t arrived at the room because
I had pushed them there, like I had
prepared a map and they were
inevitably going to end up in this place,
but to feel that their actions and
emotional responses had brought them
there. (The Die world can be very
mapped and defined, such as in the
comic itself, but Ben doesn’t think or
visualise as spatially as Sol does, and
doesn’t do as much worldbuilding, he
wants to leave that to his friends.)
I reserved a private room for the game
so it would just be the players in a
closed, almost isolated location. I
prepared a number of playlists; mostly
scores and other music without vocals.
A few songs were specifically marked
for certain story beats I wanted to hit,
and would be looped during those
scenes if necessary. I prepared some
snacks, not wanting a tense or
emotional scene to be interrupted by
rustling of wrappers.
The table I left almost entirely empty –
none of the usual gaming mats, no
papers, just the Box and the character
sheets. I wanted the immediate
impression to be a sense of: “this isn’t
like a game you’ve played before. We
start this from a clean slate and add
onto it as we go.” This worked
tremendously to raise interest
immediately. Walking in on a room
without any of the usual reference
books, map scrolls, miniatures, dice,
etcetera, in it – and specifically a room
that contained simply one table and four
chairs – drew looks of curiosity. It also
made walking into the room in character
as our personas much easier – it
seemed like a reasonable set-up for a
get-together. It worked wonderfully –
the moment the door closed, we fell
effortlessly into character as our
personas.
Although not a lot was on the table to
begin with, I had, of course, some props.
This was the majority of my prep work,
really. I wanted to do prep work that
adds a sense of tangibility to the world
and a sense of mysticism to the game. I
brought in a book on Dalí with pages
marked for references when the players
encountered visuals from his paintings;
I tweaked Ben’s character and
motivations to be Ellisonesque in a way,
to create a further tie with Theo.
There are elements to Ben that are
lifted, to some extent, from the
personality of AM, the antagonist in
Ellison’s infamous I Have No Mouth, and
I Must Scream – like AM, he can build his
own world, but wants to bring people
there and keep them there. AM’s
motives are far more twisted, but Ben’s
are selfish in their own way. Speaking
of, Ben’s motivation was easy to arrive
at, I suspect his horror of realizing the
limits of his abilities and the crushing
reality of the world is something that
strikes quite a few people eventually.
This way I also arrived at creating a
Master who is, as a person,
sympathetic, but by what he puts his
friends through without their consent
(and without a second thought), is still
both disturbed and disturbing.
As mentioned, there was a low-volume
soundtrack throughout; during the early
scenes, it looped the tango from the
score of Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou. Other
parts of the game would have other
musical cues that were equally fitting.
Sometimes (as in the case of the tango)
the players didn’t know the idea behind
the musical choice, which actually
helped make the scenery more
disjointed and unsettling. The final
scene was set to versions of Ravel’s
Boléro, and worked wonderfully. It has
this terrific rhythm of escalation, and
Ravel is believed to have had an existing
cerebral condition that led to the
experimental composition of the piece;
a good theme for Ben during his final
moments confronting the party as he
struggles with his own world and
realities.
In loose preparation prior to the day of
the game, I determined certain beats
that, one way or another, had to happen
– Dana had to help David at an
inopportune time and steal his thunder
so that she could get him to understand
that her helping him is nothing to be
frustrated or childish over, that it comes
from a place of love; Theo had to be
faced with a crowd of people who
expected him to impart his wisdom, only
to realize that he doesn’t have all the
answers he thought he did, and that
nobody does. I had some thoughts for
potential scenes to communicate this
and had written down possible
scenarios, then during the game, picked
the ones that seemed appropriate
based on the actions of the players. It
helped to have ideas at the ready but to
also be fluid in which ones to choose.
This took the shape of a few index cards
with bullet points, keywords, and small
and simple “if (x) then (y)” reminders.
I’m a performer and do my share of
acting; the other players don’t, but
creating mannerisms and a separate
voice for Ben helped me as a GM nudge
the players into accepting their
personas more. This isn’t strictly
necessary, but any basic book on acting
from a local library can give you some
pointers.
And then we get to the good stuff – the
Box. It’s a cheap wooden box painted to
look a bit distressed and more mystical.
Contained within were a few things – a
dragon miniature, an origami crane,
tarot cards, a black feather and a white
one, a small D6, a necklace with a sigil
pendant, a pearl, a piece of driftwood, a
large pebble, a few plastic toys, all sorts
of things. I put it on the table and made
no comment on it. When asked about it, I
kept my answers playfully unhelpful. I
wanted the players to be desperate to
know what it is without frustrating
them, and I think I succeeded.
I specifically bought single dice at the
shop we were playing in – dice I knew
the players would like the looks of, each
a different design – though slightly
tellingly, David’s and Dana’s had the
numbers written in the same gold
colour. These personas, like anyone, are
separate people, but ultimately linked,
and I wanted even the dice to reflect it.
Pictured: a mock-up reconstruction of
Calder’s Box of Crap. Calder would like
to stress that the unpainted dragon is
not because he doesn’t paint his minis,
but because he’s a little intimidated to
start the fearsome beast. I believe this
is because of some colours are hard to
paint rather than just being scared of
the mini. Oh – and the antlers were
found when hiking.
HOW THE GAME WENT
The three friends traversed empty
landscapes, saw strange paintings
come to life, and fought Fallen origami
monsters. Theo and David got over their
issues and, wanting to return home,
more or less forced Ben to agree at
gunpoint. Theo, David, and Dana got
their somewhat happy endings; Ben
suffered another breakdown and
admitted himself to a mental health
ward where (of course) some patients
were playing D&D and invited him to join.
We left him – and the story – before he
decided.
The game went very well, the balance
between planning and (somewhat
guided) improvisation went very
smoothly. The effort toward some
cryptic elements in the presentation
kept the players interested and, later,
satisfied. I kept the Fallen and other
challenges minimally underpowered –
Ben wanted to create a world in which
Theo, Dana and David felt powerful and
wouldn’t be seriously hurt. It also helped
the encounters flow and to keep the
players not just feeling satisfied, but
encouraged to progress. After stepping
away from the game and the personas,
talking things over, there was a lot of
positive feedback about the game
having succeeded in being different in
tone and approach to the nature of D&D,
but celebratory and cathartic in spirit.
BIO
Calder Ravel is a bi transman who
returned to art, tabletop gaming, writing,
and performance after failing at and
giving up on maintaining a respectable
life and sensible career.
EXAMPLE GAME: DEATH OF THE FAEWILDS
THE GROUP
In high school they played D&D
together, but an argument kept them
from getting together for the final
session. Years later, their GM dies
unexpectedly. Reports say it was
suicide, but details of the investigation
have more meaning for the former D&D
group. They’re all brought back together
at their ten-year high school reunion, to
play that final game.
Holly, Dictator
As a teen: defined by her relationship to
the group’s GM, Damien. Childhood best
friends with Glen. She’s controlling and
quick to write people off. Things have to
go her way. A big fight she started with
Erin kept the group from finishing their
final game.
As an adult: studied psychology. Had big
wedding to Damien, and an even bigger
divorce. Six months later, he dies.
Used to play a custom Knight /
Spellcaster class, created by Damien.
Glen makes her the Dictator because of
her control issues.
Avery, Fear Knight
As a teen: daughter of the school
principal. Tells her parents she’s in a
study group when she’s really playing
D&D. Her parents discover the lie, and
ground her, right before the final game
session.
As an adult: med school dropout, hiding
this fact from her parents. Moved away
and is only back for the reunion.
Used to play a broody Dragonborn
fighter.
Glen makes her the Emotion Knight
because of her anxieties.
Erin, Fool
As a teen: a bit of a troublemaker who
hung out with the wrong crowd. Uses
humour to cover anxieties. Stole a fancy
D20 from Damien, which sparked a fight
with Holly, causing their last game
session to be cancelled.
As an adult: after Damien and Holly’s
divorce, she and Damien reconnect and
start sleeping together. She returns his
D20 to him, which is later found at the
scene of his death.
Used to play a custom Shapeshifter
class.
Glen makes her the Fool because of her
tendency to cause problems.
Glen, Master
As a teen: childhood friends with Holly.
Hung around her and Damien in school.
Had eyes for Damien, but didn’t act on
his feelings out of respect for Holly.
However, Damien attempted to cheat on
Holly with Glen, a fact which Glen has
been hiding from Holly.
As an adult: teaches English Lit at the
local high school. Hosts an actual play
podcast he’s trying to get off the
ground.
Used to play a Wizard.
Glen makes himself Master, with the
Rules of Dreams archetype
THE PREP
This game was recorded as an actual
play podcast. The four of us do not live
in close proximity, and we expected to
only have one day to play this game in
person. I went into it with the
assumption that we would be able to
complete the entire game in one sitting.
After getting through the opening
encounter, it became obvious that we
would not have time to finish, so the rest
of the game was recorded over four
more sessions. We stuck mostly to the
structure of my initial outline, although
many of the details changed as the plot
solidified.
Each persona’s central conflict seemed
to be centred on unresolved events
from high school. Holly and Damien’s
relationship, Erin and Holly’s fight,
Avery’s absence at a critical moment,
and Glen’s secret knowledge about
Damien’s cheating. These aren’t strictly
core drives; Glen is the only one who
really wants to address these issues.
The game ended up being less about
tempting the personas to stay in the
game world, and more about the group
working through teenage melodrama
that bled into their adult lives.
Additionally, the murder mystery
presented a bit of a problem for me. It
was established as a mystery, but the
suspicious element of the crime scene
(the presence of Damien’s special D20)
was easily explained away by Erin and
Damien’s brief relationship before his
death. I decided that the mystery itself
was really only in Glen’s mind, which
gave him a motivation: to find out if one
of his friends had killed his crush.
I didn’t want Glen to just disappear as
soon as the group arrived in the world.
He wants to find out what happened to
Damien, and needs to be present, but
having him be a part of the group was
also a problem. So instead of teleporting
away, he made himself appear to be in a
magical coma, which also meant the
group needed to find out how to heal
him, and became a motivation for them
to start working together.
The game itself had to force the
personas to confront their own actions
as teens. The easiest way to do this was
to allow the players’ personas to act as
echoes of their teenage selves. The
story made the personas meet each of
their former characters in turn, to see
how unresolved issues had hurt them.
Each character also had a key piece of
info the players needed to learn.
• Holly’s character is the Queen of the
Fae. She’s now in a position that
gives her authority and control.
Additionally, she is about to marry a
character that looks exactly like
Damien. She knows how the players
can return home.
• Avery’s character is the Exile, who
believes that her self-imposed exile
is protecting the world from the Blue
Spirit. Avery was grounded right
before the final game session and
Holly/Erin’s big fight, so the Exile is
locked in a cage inside a copy of
Avery’s childhood home. The Exile
knows that the world is real and that
the players must choose between
the game and the real world.
• Erin’s character is the Shapeshifter,
a figure that leads a gang of thieves.
They steal more to mess with people
than for any real gain. Their
headquarters is also in the facsimile
of Avery’s childhood home (where
the Exile lives). The Shapeshifter
knows that the world is unstable as
long as the players haven’t made
their decision.
• Glen’s character is the Secret
Keeper, who died in the intervening
years. Comparatively little is known
about him.
These characters’ appearances served
as encounters, although there was a
distinct possibility that none of these
would turn towards combat, so I
included a couple of additional combat
challenges to allow the players
opportunities to use their abilities, get a
sense for how cool they could be in this
world, and to lead them towards the
encounters with their former
characters.
The instability of the world was also an
echo of their past. The big bad of their
game, the Blue Spirit, (a threat they
never actually saw and never defeated)
made for a good option. Initially I
planned to have the Blue Spirit appear in
the final scene, providing a big climactic
fight that the players could choose to
participate in if their persona decided to
stay in the world. However, before the
last session of the game I realized I
could make the Secret Keeper have
been the Blue Spirit all along, a plan that
Glen and Damien could have come up
with together, and another secret that
Glen’s been holding onto for all these
years. If the players decided to leave,
the threat would never appear, and if
they decided to stay, the Blue Spirit
would rear its head, because Glen is
back in the world. It felt more
appropriate to the tone of the game to
keep the climax personal, stripped of
magic, just an argument between
friends who were once close.
Eventually, all roads needed to lead
back to Damien, so the final encounter
took place at the wedding of the Queen
to her Damien proxy. Once the players
“healed” Glen, he could be left to
“recover” while the players attended
the wedding. This gave them a chance
to play dress up, and have a moment to
interact with some key NPCs. Here I
seeded some temptations for each
player, and had Holly interact with fake-
Damien. He made some advances
toward Holly, foreshadowing the later
reveal of Damien’s cheating.
Once the players had sufficient
interaction, Glen made his move,
knocking out the wedding guests and
disguising himself as Damien, in an
attempt to shock the personas into
confessing. I had decided that, however
this confrontation went, Glen could
reveal himself, and the rest would be up
to the players.
HOW THE GAME WENT
Interactions with their former
characters helped Holly, Erin, and Avery
work through some issues in their
relationships before the wedding. Glen’s
appearance as Damien and the eventual
reveal of all of Glen’s manipulations
turned out to be less confrontational
than expected. No blows were traded, I
never spent a Cheat Token. I tried to
tempt Holly into using her Voice to make
Glen want to leave, but the argument
between Holly and Glen provided more
compelling roleplay opportunities, and
became the emotional climax of the
game regardless. Much of the game was
designed to get the players to work
through their personas’ issues, and
come through the other side. Staying in
the world was always an option, but not
really a success state for the players.
Additionally, since the players chose to
resolve their issues, everyone was on
the same page about leaving. Once Glen
was convinced, I gave the personas
time to say goodbye to their old
characters and new friends, before
ending the game on a slightly upbeat
note.
BIO
Drew Wills (Glen) and Gen Ainslow
(Holly) are the co-hosts of DIE-
COMPRESSED, a podcast about all things
DIE. Death of the Faewilds was recorded
as an actual play podcast on the same
feed, which can be found here: die-
compressed.libsyn.com. They are also
on twitter at @DIEcompressed.
EXAMPLE GAME: GIRL GROUP
THE GROUP
I had a table consisting entirely of
trans/nonbinary people, 4/5 of us on
the femme side of things. Because
most of my gaming groups for the
past few years have been
predominantly women (and I don’t
think I’ve ever run with less than two
people who would have described
themselves as women at the time), I
was interested in exploring this side
of RPG culture. So I proposed an all-
girl gaming group from college
reuniting as adults. The players
decided they played a steampunk
noir version of White Wolf’s
Changeling: The Dreaming, and so off
we went.
Marc, a Dictator
Transitioned shortly after college.
High school guidance counsellor with
a kid, to whom he’s a loving and
devoted single father. He came from
money, but they took his transition
poorly and he hasn’t spoken to them
in a few years. He played a goat
pooka named Philip. He volunteers at
the library, and likes to read
nonfiction. The guidance counsellor
bit made the Dictator feel
appropriate, and the player was a
rape survivor so I trusted him with
the nuances.
Alice, a Fool
A paleoarcheology major who
struggled with the sexism of the field
and so became an extremely
scammy consultant, in marked
contrast to her extremely earnest
college self. Terrible taste, a massive
crush on Grimes, and a “drug
aficionado.” Played a thinly veiled
Sherlock Holmes clone named Ada. Is
painfully straight. The way the
persona had gone from earnestness
to scam artist made the Fool feel
perfect.
Amy, a Vigilance Knight
An academically diligent type who
went on to grad school en route to
becoming a sociology professor.
Generally unsatisfied with the
academic life, which she
nevertheless devotes her whole self
to. Played a femme fatale type in
their old game. Has a gardening
hobby. The straightforward nature of
the character seemed perfect for the
Knight.
Claire, a Godbinder
Worked at the gaming store where
the group played. She was pre-law in
college, but bombed her LSAT and
didn’t get into law school, and so is
still managing the store. Used to date
Amy, but they broke up after college.
GMed the game, but had a favourite
NPC, a wisecracking Jean Harlow
type club owner. Very into Irish folk
music. With only the Neo and the
Godbinder left, I went with
Godbinder, as turning a store
manager into a god manager made
me smile.
Rachel, a Master
Women’s studies major. Was a super
woke neopagan goth, but has settled
into being a housewife, which she
regrets terribly. She wants to get the
gang back together and into a world
that’s much more interesting than
the bland oblivion of adulthood.
Unrequited crush on Marc from
college.
THE PREP
During character creation, tensions
immediately flared between Rachel
and Claire. This wasn’t super written
into their backstories, but it emerged
organically so I went with it and
immediately started ramping up
Rachel’s condescension towards
Claire. Then, during the initial Fallen
attack, Claire made a bad call and
got reduced to zero hit dice. Alice
jumped in to try to save her, freely
admitting she didn’t know what she
was doing, and then critically failed
it. Marc intervened and Dictatored
Claire not to eat anybody, but this
was still an obvious and early
concern.
So when I sat down to prepare the
second session, I knew that dealing
with Claire was a priority. Her death
was at least partly down to adapting
to a new system, and so I wanted to
give her a second chance. Also, I
recognized that having Marc’s D4
tied up like that was an interesting
pressure point – there was a lot of
available drama in setting up
situations that could most easily be
resolved with the D4 and letting
Marc sweat whether or not to risk
taking Claire off the leash.
The risk of this, of course, was that
Marc would likely die in the course of
resurrecting Claire. But how would
Rachel feel about this? Obviously
Claire could get fucked as far as she
was concerned, but having people
die got in the way of her big desire to
get everyone back together again.
So fine, as soon as I had someone
other than Claire be Fallen I could
have Rachel burn a Cheat Token to
fix it.
It was here that I got one of those
ideas that makes you stop short. If
Rachel wanted everything back the
way it was and was going to burn a
Cheat Token resurrecting Marc,
wouldn’t she prefer to bring him back
as the girl she had a crush on? It was
a horrifying idea. But it fit. Marc’s
player was a trans dude as well, and
the persona was designed in part
around the idea of playing with his
own complex relationship with the
feminist spaces of his adolescence
and early adulthood. It was, in other
words, an interesting horror, as
opposed to something showy and
traumatic for the sake of it. So I
asked him if he’d be game for it. He
was, so I decided to put it in as a
possibility.
I want to stop for a moment and say
that this was an extremely high-risk
decision. It would have been
completely inappropriate of me to
even try it without pre-clearing it
with Marc’s player. I was prepared to
have it X-Carded by one of the other
players if they found it too triggering.
Even with these practical
considerations, which I should stress
are the bare minimum if you’re going
to pull something like this, it would
have been utterly inappropriate for
me to even consider it if I weren’t an
experienced GM who was myself
trans and running a game for a
predominantly trans group all of
whom I was good friends with.
Extreme content like this can work
amazingly—the detransition reveal
was probably the most successful
and impactful beat of the game—but
it can also go ruinously badly. Be
extremely careful, and make 100%
sure that you’re the right GM playing
with the right group before you poke
a major trauma in the eye like this.
So I had some major plot beats. What
I didn’t have yet was a framework for
them. So, on the one hand I had a
theme of losing the glamour and
magic of the old gaming group. On
the other, I had a steampunk noir
Chicago setting. That lent itself well
to a sort of “last party as the end
closes in” vibe. There’d been a
mention of the group as working
class students at a very preppy
liberal arts college, so I knocked
together a gang called the Silver
WASPs that were about to storm the
city.
I knew I wanted to use Claire’s old
NPC and the bar. Since Claire’s core
drive was obviously being stuck in
her dead-end job and having failed at
her ambitions, I decided Violet should
have been bought out and now stuck
behind the bar while the guy who
proctored Claire’s LSAT ran the
place. That seemed a good first
encounter – the players had reason
to go there, and going to the bar to
get information is a classic.
For a second set piece, I figured I
should do something to bring Amy
and Alice into things. Amy hadn’t
given me a ton to work with, but I had
gardening. There’s a botanical
garden near me that has a couple of
corpse flowers that they hold parties
for the opening of, so that sprung to
mind as a possible setting, with the
corpse flower being a viable
McGuffin to offer a resurrection if
that was still needed. (If not, I'd just
wave my hands vaguely and mutter
something about people with
information about the Silver wasps.)
And I liked the idea of a Grimes-like
figure holding a ridiculously luxurious
gala full of eye-candy men that she
could offer to Alice. This would also
entice her for the eventual “don’t
you want to stay here” pitch from
Rachel.
From there I figured I should pay off
the threat closing in, so I’d have the
Silver Wasps storm the party and
take hostages, one of whom would
be a dead ringer for Marc’s son,
giving him a big encounter. Better
yet, I could have the leaders of the
gang look like his parents. I figured
that would be the big climactic set
piece, and that Rachel could make
her reappearance in the middle of it
to kick off the endgame.
That seemed like enough to go on.
Encounters that would mean
something to each of the players, a
pair of plot threads that could
motivate them, and a couple ideas
for big dramatic beats. Time to
actually run this thing.
HOW THE GAME WENT
The Claire/Marc explosion managed
to happen over getting a free ride
from a taxi driver, which was
hilariously small stakes, but hey, it’s
always nice when you have multiple
character fatalities in an effort to
avoid a two-hour walk. Other than
that, things mostly went smoothly
and according to plan until the end,
where Claire burnt a major miracle to
just incinerate the Silver Wasps,
bringing an abrupt end to my third
encounter. We were running a bit
over time at that point anyway, and
Marc had gotten a lot of plot with the
tension of controlling Fallen Claire,
so I decided to have Rachel show up,
perversely enthusing about how
much fun this was, and try to make
the sale. (Having her apologize and
fix Marc to sweeten the pot a bit.)
Unsurprisingly the players weren’t
having it, so she flew up into the air
and summoned an undead Al Capone
riding a giant steampunk tank as a
final encounter. This resulted in a
more combat heavy ending than I’d
been anticipating, but it worked as a
leadup to the party making amends
with a broken and defeated Rachel
and everybody going home.
BIO
Elizabeth Sandifer got into RPGs
because they were what all the cute
boys in trench coats were doing in
high school. She’s the author of The
Last War in Albion, a saga of magical
warfare and British comic books, and
of Neoreaction a Basilisk, a work of
horror philosophy about Nazis. She
blogs at eruditorumpress.com.
EXAMPLE GAME: “REPENT, HARLEQUIN!”
AND THE HOUSE OF MONTMARTE
THE GROUP
They used to be in an art rock band in
high school (“Repent, Harlequin!”) and
would play a Vampire-the-Masquerade-
style RPG (The House of Montmartre)
after band practice. The band broke up
near graduation when the youngest
member of the group died (Doug’s
brother, Peter). They went their
separate ways and have been mostly
out of touch for the past 15 years. Doug
is getting married and decides to have
the wedding back in his hometown. The
group agrees to get together for one
last game at the local bar.
Kath, a Neo named Vox
• Played bass and sang.
• Wanted to be a pro skater.
• Favourite band is Paramore.
• Hates Twilight but loves Anne Rice.
• Now works at a local pub, the Wild
Goose, and has worked there for
years.
• Still skates.
• Plays in a band, Lucille Baller
(sounds like Best Coast).
• Lives with bandmates.
• Sleeps around.
• Has HPV.
• Wiccan.
• Thinks of life as a joke.
• Core Drive: to have a good time.
Doesn’t want to commit to anything
or admit time is passing by.
Doug, a Godbinder named Sir Ashley
Burr Strathclyde
• Used to play drums in the band.
• Old character was a Warlock named
Decarabia.
• Wild partier, insecure, in the closet.
• Loves hardcore and punk music.
• Younger brother, Peter, died and this
sent him into a downward spiral.
• He left the band and hit rock bottom.
• Now he’s sober, living in NY, and
working as an actuary.
• In a controlling relationship with his
fiancé, Angus.
• Core Drive: to be “normal.” To stay in
control.
Kennedy, a Dictator named Marissa
Llewellyn
• Played keyboard, sang.
• Used to be the GM.
• Named the band after a Harlan
Ellison story.
• Pushed weird outfits.
• Theatre geek.
• Uninterested parents.
• Felt misunderstood.
• Sees self as radical, an activist, and
too cool for everyone.
• Loves sci-fi, gothic literature, and
Lord Byron.
• Idolizes Bjork.
• Now she works for a small theatre
company and plays in a band, Mary
Shelley Duvall – theatrical pop.
• Core Drive: to be special, important.
Wants to be understood.
Angie Brenner, a Fool named Ray
• Played flute.
• Use to play a sorcerer, Astraia.
• Got good grades.
• Dated Doug in secret.
• Never fell in love again after their
breakup.
• Rivalry with Kennedy.
• Loves Twilight, K-pop.
• Now plays flute in the SF symphony,
performing Carmen.
• Parents see as failure because she’s
not a doctor or married with children.
• Depressed. Lost in life but pretends
it’s going great.
• Core Drive: to find something she’s
passionate about.
Ro, A Master called The Portal
• Played guitar.
• Was best friends with Doug when
they were kids.
• Super nerdy and awkward in school.
• Got As in Math and Band and failed
all else.
• Tried to keep the group from
breaking up.
• Cut off contact after the breakup.
• After high school Ro became famous
for a short time for the musical
project, The Portal – psychedelic,
guitar shredding based on
mathematical equations.
• Became more and more “out there”
as a celebrity, then disappeared.
• Most people assume Ro died.
• Core Drive: to be truly seen. To live in
a world with a chosen family. To
make all their dreams come true so
they want to stay.
One of the players Skyped in to play, so I
picked the classes for everyone
beforehand. That way he could print out
his character sheet before the first
session. I chose the classes based on
what I thought the player would like
playing most.
• One player is studying to be a
computer programmer and loves
animals, so I gave her the Neo. One
player loves making up intricate
details about the lore of his
characters, so I gave him the
Godbinder.
• One player has the best sense of
humour and loves making jokes in
RPGs, so I gave her the Fool.
• One player loves storytelling and
appreciates the power of story. He is
a huge fan of DIE, the comic, and
would enjoy playing the class of the
main character, so I made him the
Dictator
Ironically, a couple of the players ended
up making personas that were basically
opposite their class personalities. The
player I gave the Fool ended up breaking
from her usual and making a super
serious persona. The player I gave the
Neo made someone who was carefree
and reckless, a perfect match for the
Fool. The player with the Godbinder
made a persona with a history of
addiction, so that would have fit the
Neo. But I decided not to switch any
classes around, and I think this added
some interesting tension.
The group steps out of my spooky
bedroom after fighting some fallen, and
into the vampire world of their RPG from
high school; the grey, gothic grounds of
a classic manor house. This gave a lot of
possible locations for encounters – the
gatehouse, mansion, gardens, orchards,
rectory and chapel. The personas all
liked different styles of vampire/gothic,
so there was a lot of content to pull from
– the Brontës’ moors, the ballroom from
Interview With a Vampire, villains and
heroes based on the characters from
Twilight. The group encounters two
vampire clans at war, one good, one
evil, battling for control of the manor.
THE PREP
A lot of the information the players gave
about their personas was about bands
they like and bands they played in, so I
got the idea to create a secret playlist. A
lot of my prep time was spent finding
songs for each encounter, then I wrote
in my notes when to play each track. I
filled in the playlist by asking players
more music-based questions like, “Was
there any type of music your persona
used to listen to a lot?” and “What does
your persona’s current band sound
like?”
Ro is obsessed with patterns and they
try to control other people to cope with
their fears. Their motivation is to live in a
world where they think they can indulge
these obsessions and manipulate their
surroundings without consequences,
like in their old high school RPG. Ro
never felt like anyone saw them for who
they really were, except during their
games. They didn’t realize they could be
accepted in real life, so they are trying
to stay in the game forever with their
chosen family. The encounters are
meant either to make the group’s real
lives seem terrible or to make this world
seem as wonderful as possible.
The basic idea of encounters and
locations:
1. Briefing from a likable character who
introduces them to the “good”
vampire clan, Skate Coven –
mansion ballroom
2. Encounter with a monster – gardens
3. Encounter with old characters –
chapel
4. Encounter with “bad” vampire clan,
the Mortavi – orchards
5. Find the Oracle who gives them a key
to discovering the secret base –
moors
6. Encounter with the Mortavi leaders –
secret room in the mansion
7. Final encounter with the Master –
rooftop of the mansion.
All the personas are musicians and have
a desire for recognition, so I wanted to
have the group be famous and adored
here. There was a prophecy by the
Oracle that foretold the group would
come and save Skate Coven. The coven
was excitedly waiting for their heroes to
arrive, and begged them to perform.
Kath still has the same lifestyle she had
in high school. She doesn’t want to grow
up, so I wanted to give her the
opportunity to stay in her teenage
fantasy. The group met Hayley Williams,
singer of Kath’s favourite band, and she
debriefed the group. I also made Hayley
a bard so I had a reason to play the first
track of the playlist.
Kath is a Wiccan, and a skater. I thought
a whole community of people like her
would be very appealing, and might
even make her real life of one-night
stands seem shallow. I named the
“good” vampire clan Skate Coven. In
place of a garden, there’s a skate park,
and I planned for Hayley to tempt Kath
to stay by asking her to join their coven.
Kath has been at the same low-level bar
job for years, so I wanted to represent
the bar and the drudgery of her real life,
which is going nowhere. I made the
monster a giant robotic wild goose that
plays Best Coast.
I think Kath’s carefree attitude is
covering up her deep fear of death. I
thought if she saw someone she cared
about die, it might force her to confront
her fears or create some interesting
character transformation. Hayley was
kidnapped by the Mortavi (they looked
like the group’s high school bullies) and
fatally wounded in front of the group.
The group was forced to participate in
the next part of the adventure of this
world if they wanted to save their new
friend.
Doug has little joy and excitement in his
real life, so I thought I’d give him some
opportunities to connect with these
suppressed emotions. I wanted to tempt
him to return to his partier ways, so I
made the ballroom encounter a cross
between the dinner party from Interview
With a Vampire and the rave from Blade.
But I also wanted Doug to have the
option to connect with something really
positive, so I planned on asking during
the session if there’s anything he used
to really enjoy when he was young, then
added that activity to the party
(traditional Japanese drums).
Ro thinks Doug’s marriage is a big
mistake, so I wanted to give Doug a dark
vision of how terrible marriage could be.
The group met Doug’s old character,
Decarabia, in an unhappy marriage to a
troll, surrounded by dozens of crying
babies. Decarabia was forbidden from
going on any more adventures, so he
uses his wand to flick the fireplace on
and off like a television, while ‘Guillotine’
by Death Grips angstily plays in the
background.
I also thought Doug might prefer to live
in a reality where he never had to grieve
his brother’s death, so I brought Peter
into this world as his old cleric
character. He is happy, healthy, and has
a good life here. He also has the power
to heal, so the group has to go to him if
they want to save Hayley.
Kennedy used to make decisions for the
direction of the band, she was their old
GM, and she has a creative job in her
real life. I wanted to tempt her with full
creative control in this fantasy world,
and appeal to her huge ego. I made the
entire moors area a theatrical
production space, run by the Oracle
(Bjork) and her assistant (Lord Byron).
After Lord Byron gives the group a tour,
he tells Kennedy she is the only one
worthy enough to take the honoured
place of Bjork as the new oracle. I made
Bjork’s glowing crown the key to
discovering the location of the secret
base.
Kennedy’s core drive is to be
understood. I wanted to add a detail
from her more obscure interests, so she
would feel like this world really gets her.
I skimmed the Harlan Ellison story
Kennedy named the band after for
something I could put in this world that
the other personas wouldn’t know
about. Then I had Lord Byron ask the
group to play as a test of their
worthiness, and the audience threw
jellybeans onto the stage.
I wanted to give Angie an opportunity to
feel worthy and a sense of meaning in
this world, so I made her old character,
Astraia, into a martyr here. She was the
coven’s beloved leader who sadly died
in battle. The group sees a huge shrine
around a portrait of Astraia (who looks
like Bella Swan). The coven senses a
similarity in Angie and tempts her with
this meaningful role.
Angie loves cheesy romances, but
doesn’t have any romance in her real
life, so I thought I’d tempt her with a
passionate love interest. the group
encounters Edward, who woos Angie
while Thousand Years by Christina Perri
(from Twilight soundtrack) plays in the
background.
Angie’s parents never thought anything
she did was good enough, so I wanted
to have an opportunity for Angie’s skills
to be recognized. I made the final puzzle
something she could solve. I made the
sheet music for the Habenera the
passcode to open the door to the
Mortavi base.
Finally, I wanted to give Angie a chance
to have a cathartic confrontation with
her perfectionist parents while ‘Kill This
Love’ by BlackPink plays in the
background. So I made her parents the
leaders of the Mortavi. They looked like
the villains from Twilight.
Ro’s core drive is to be seen for who
they are and accepted by their chosen
family. They don’t realize they can have
this in the real world, so I wanted to
choose spells that would make the other
personas see the real world in the
negative way that Ro sees it. I made Ro
a Master of Dreams and planned dark
visions of the persona’s futures in the
real world. Angie as the surgeon her
parents wanted her to be, operating on
herself. Kath sees her old and warty
reflection.
After Ro explains who they are and why
they want to stay, I suspect my players
will want to try to find a peaceful
resolution, and I want to give them the
chance to do so. So I planned on
reminding them they could combine
persuasion checks with each other. I
brought back all the sympathetic
characters (Edward, Lord Byron, Peter,
and Hayley) in a final attempt to
convince everyone to stay, so the group
could even add in rolls from sympathetic
NPCs.
I wanted the group to feel like they had
to come to agreement quickly, so I
created a big, gothic storm to show the
world was ending. Every time the
lightening flashed, the cliffs with the
raging sea breaking against them
appeared closer and closer.
I added basic stats from the manual and
tweaked them a bit as the group went
along.
HOW THE GAME WENT
This was my first time as a GM, so I was
learning what worked well for DIE, but
also how I would run any game next
time.
This all ended up playing more like an
adventure game than an open world
RPG, so I kept checking in with everyone
to make sure they weren’t feeling to
railroaded. They all were down for
puzzle-focused encounters. The game
ended up lasting four sessions and the
players would have been happy to keep
going for even longer.
Everyone had their personas make up
names for their characters. I thought
this might get confusing, but it actually
worked well. It didn’t really add to the
story, but it was an interesting way for
me to gauge how much the persona was
identifying with this world. When Angie
started introducing herself as Ray, it felt
like she was embracing the fantasy.
I was certain my awesome encounters
would convince the personas to stay,
but I was so wrong. The players were
loving it, but I could not predict what the
personas would do. For example, I
thought bringing back the kid brother
would be a big pro for staying, but it
actually had the opposite effect. The
personas were (realistically) deeply
disturbed and offended.
The world I made was so basic (mansion
on one side, cliffs and moors on the
other, and garden and chapel in
between) and I was adjusting the
placement of things as we went along,
so a map seemed unnecessary. But next
time I would definitely draw a map out in
the beginning for the players who feel
more immersed with cardinal directions.
The Fool was more of a challenge to run.
My sister was the Fool, so it could have
been affected by sibling dynamics. But
she also had trouble getting used to
taking risks that could hinder the group,
because this was so different from the
way we normally play our characters.
And her main stuff didn’t come up until
the end with the parents as the main
villains, so the player was feeling less
involved. I had to figure out how to add
extra encounters that would tempt
Angie into using her powers. So I added
her crush, Edward, captured and
guarded by baddies. I tried to ask her to
describe the way she was taking an
action (somersaulting into the room vs
sneaking) to find more reasons to let her
roll the dice. I also wrote some extra
arcana, so she had a power that was
more “helpful.” (She recklessly drank at
the vampire bar without asking what
was in the glass, so she could roll to
smell the blood if someone was nearby.
The better the roll, the more extensive
her bloodlust power.) She got the hang
of her character by the third session,
making Angie a flirty rogue who would
recklessly attempt to seduce anyone
who got in her way.
As a consequence of Doug not paying
back some god debt before making
another request, I had his fey god turn
the gardens into a big labyrinth. It was a
cool visual and fun to throw everyone
into the centre when Angie finally
turned over her die to get away from a
gang of bullies. But turns out it is not fun
to just go off of the mechanics for rolling
out of the maze. Once again, I should
have made a map for the players to see
where they were in the labyrinth.
In the conclusion, Ro gave their
monologue, then the personas took
turns trying to make Ro understand why
it was wrong to create this world and
manipulate everyone into staying. I’m
glad that the players were so into it they
were really expressive about how their
personas were feeling. But it was
intense for me to see my sister to look at
me with tears in her eyes and say, “This
is not the way! Come home with us.” I
honestly started to feel a little attacked
before I realized I could just ask the
player if they wanted to roll a
persuasion check, and then move on to
the next turn. I realized, when it gets too
personal, just bring it back to
mechanics.
After the personas were back in the real
world, we all had a good time
brainstorming what everyone’s life was
like after the game, a year, and ten
years later. Doug left the game owing
god debt, so he had to have real life
consequences. (The debt was for some
fake gold from his fey god, so all money
Doug touched in the real world turned to
plants. Doug changed his profession
from actuary to gardener until he paid it
off.)
By the end of the story, the personas
ended up understanding Ro and
themselves better. I think we all created
characters that felt personal in some
big ways, as usually happens with
RPGs, but I think this game felt
especially cathartic for everyone.
Other than a few things, all the
encounters went over well, the music
was an exciting addition, and we all had
a blast. There were some deep cuts and
emotional moments that were kind of
intense, but it was balanced with
silliness and humour. The players were
immediately talking about our next DIE
game. We even came up with another
premise to play again as a sort of sequel
to this story. (Kennedy snatched the
dice at the end and hid them for
safekeeping, but one day they are taken
by some curious youths from the
LGBTQ+ music camp that Ro and Kath
started.)
BIO
Evar Restad started playing D&D three
years ago with this same group of
people. This was their first time running
a game. They love playing games,
immersive art, and meditation. They
make art, music, and sometimes write.
You can see some of their art here:
Closedeyevision.com
https://www.facebook.com/churchofcol
orandlight/
Listen to their music here:
https://evalizard.bandcamp.com/
https://diegeisterbeschworen.bandcam
p.com/
And read some stuff they wrote here:
http://resurrectoakland.com/blog
You can find the playlist for the game
here: http://bit.ly/repentdieplaylist
EXAMPLE GAME: THE WORST INTENTIONS
THE GROUP
The party was a group of D&D players in
high school, acquaintances through the
school band, relationships, aesthetic
affiliations, and convenience.
Connecting the players was done with
an approach like bonds in a Dungeon
World party, giving each member a
reason to know at least two of the
others.
Ollie (He/ze), the Rage Knight
• Crust punk, “you never grow out of
goth”.
• Loved black and death metal and
their aesthetics.
• Autistic.
• Strained relationship with father.
• Stepfather was a verbally abusive
cop; his mother was also a cop and
enabled it.
• Dropped out of art school after a
year, hated college.
• Started several unsuccessful
webcomics after investing in the
scene.
• Alienated from his punk crowd after
legal troubles surrounding a
legitimate act of self-defence
• Loses himself in fights in the pit.
Since then, he has immersed himself
in the music scene, getting into
fights in the pit regularly.
• Previously the GM of the group
• Drives: to be free of his family, to be
known for something positive, and to
finish something.
I gave this persona the Rage Knight to
align with the anti-authoritarian
aesthetic they were building toward and
to provide them with a weapon to swing
at the very systemic issues punishing
them in their life.
Billy (They/he), the Dictator
• State school for 1 year, then dropped
out to sort out their gender.
• Finished a 2-year degree in webdev,
using it to make a Myspace page for
their music career. They identify as
nonbinary, agender, and
genderqueer with a traditionally
masc presentation. Works as a DJ at
a gay bar.
• Previously the Bard in the party.
• Misc: played drums in band, second
choice for the original group.
• Drives: to be famous or popular, to
be seen.
I gave this player the Dictator because
their persona came across as very
alienated and with a strong desire to
share their experience through
performance. I also wanted a Dictator in
the party to play with the Rage Knight’s
creative violence skillset.
Megan “M” (She/Her), the Neo
• Tutored Ollie and then dated them in
high school.
• High-strung bookworm from a
wealthy family.
• College and her success were
assumed.
• Drowned in extracurriculars (chess,
debate, etc.).
• Attended Yale for chemistry and
excelled.
• Isolated due to their intensive
studies.
• Currently weighing a job offer with a
great salary, but remain undecided.
• Struggling with their newfound
independence.
• Attracted to the Wizard, but played a
Rogue in first game.
• Drives: To understand themselves,
to find the (right) answer
I gave this player the Neo at their
request, however I wanted to have a
constant strong motivation for the
character to interact with the world,
often in dangerous ways through the
fair gold mechanic.
Kenneth (He/Him), the Master
• Owned all the sourcebooks.
• Hosted games at his house.
• Raided family booze cabinet.
• Belligerent over the rules.
• Cheated dice rolls when nobody was
looking.
• Played the Paladin’s oath
disruptively.
• Previously an officer in the marines.
• Alcoholic with a chip on his shoulder.
• Believes he is not respected enough
for his service.
• Nostalgic for his service.
• Paladin in the original party.
• Misc: first trumpet in school.
• Drive: to feel important again, to
receive gratitude.
At the table, this group consisted of
players consisted of all trans folks I’ve
regularly played with, so going in we
used a pre-existing set of ground rules
that meant we wouldn’t use transphobia
or gender discrimination as plot points
or conflicts. The players took this
opportunity to have plenty of long form
in character discussions about the
identity of their personas and
characters throughout the campaign,
especially as their characters had very
different gender presentations than the
personas.
THE PREP
The game was set in Necronomica, the
world created by Ollie for their original
campaign. I based the world around the
core themes of the albums listed as
fundamental to Ollie’s music taste and
the imagery of their album covers.
Additionally, at the end of the first
session I drew three cards from a
custom tarot deck I have, revealing the
singularity, the game show, and the
terrorist. Sitting down with these
themes and images I set about building
three set pieces, each of which primarily
aimed at a single persona’s drives.
I chose to isolate themes of
transhumanism and intuitive
understanding in conjunction with the
first tarot card, the singularity. This took
the form of a vast and desiccated
academy, part mausoleum and part
college campus, where the scale was so
massive and the weight of expectation
and bureaucracy so heavy that the
players were miniscule in comparison.
Contained within was a series of
interviews designed to frustrate the
players with various miniscule tasks,
leading up to a cinematically introduced
auditorium, featuring a skewered
skeleton in graduation robes. The
skeleton’s mind held the secrets of Die
and was accessible by our Neo, who felt
the pains of academia most acutely.
The skeleton’s mind would allow the
players to access the truth of the world
of Die, and also offer the temptation of
perfect knowledge to the Neo.
For the second set piece, I created a
colossus wandering forever in a loop,
meaning it was waist-high in a canyon
when the players encountered it.
Focusing on the themes of the
uselessness of forever war, I created
two societies locked in an eternal
conflict. The first was a kingdom resting
atop the back and head of the goliath,
agricultural and feudal in nature. This
would contrast the fantastic and idyllic
imagery of high fantasy with the
extractive and restrictive monarchy
occupying the territory. Using a child
king and the misguided enthusiasm for
war of child soldiers, I painted a picture
of misguided conviction that was
difficult to stomach.
Around the outskirts was a society
called the clingers, roughly equipped
brigand types with a society suspended
from the sides of the goliath and finding
safety in the nooks and crannies of its
body. They were characterized by their
poverty, age, and the proliferation of
prosthetic limbs. They would be
introduced first as freedom fighters, to
utilize the terrorist card, in their struggle
against the oppression of the kingdom
above. Additionally, they reveal that
they have been rescuing the sick and
elderly from the kingdom after their use
and efficiency is reduced, giving them
an anticapitalistic bent that I expected
would appeal to my players.
The third set piece went unused due to
the players, but consisted of a
mountaintop performance venue to bear
out the game show card and give the
Dictator a chance to amplify their Voice
and give the performance of as lifetime.
I planned to introduce this area as one
of two massive peaks, the other
destroyed by the Master’s machinations
and so the Dictator’s voice would be
essential to restoring the balance of the
world and allowing its people to
continue unharmed. Elements of gender
segregation existed between the two
pillars, to highlight the reward for
introspection about gender present in
the persona generation.
For the final confrontation, I gave the
Master a massive ziggurat inside a
spreading realm of polygonal platonic
ideals called the Glass Sea. The region
was described as a warped field on a
grid of light, with golden glass and
shapes forming various stage-graphics,
like houses on a film set with only one
side or various “assets” aligned in
perfect order like a developer’s cache in
a videogame. The area was patrolled by
a faction of golden haired and skinned
elven riders of Tron-like motorbikes.
Their enlarged yet muscled and graceful
proportions were designed to tie in with
the Fair of the comics while also alluding
to the poisoned idealism of aryan
preference. The glass sea itself was an
allusion to the idea of US imperialism
bombing the Middle East into a sea of
glass, which reflected the Master’s
ideals of an artificially peaceful world
brought about through order and
military might. The apparent disregard
for the variety of people and ways of life
in the world, in addition to the military
affiliation, made the Master an easy
villain and encouraged the players to
chase him down more for vengeance
than any desire for an explanation.
Throughout the game, the Master’s
ideals evolved from an initial goal of
playing saviour to a world where he
could unequivocally take the role of the
hero by bringing peace. It rapidly
transformed as the personas grew to
highlight their obsession with societal
alienation. The Master’s plan changed to
take the shape of a world dripping with
injustice and sorely in need of heroes,
so that the personas could each receive
the validation they craved as heroes.
Each set piece that existed as a
temptation to either go home or stay in
the world became an opportunity to find
the solution to their drives in their
characters. The Master himself would
serve as a monolithic villain to align
their struggle against and bring them
together following the social drift that
had happened in the years since the
original game. Both of these grand plans
would end with the party thanking him,
in his mind, for arranging such a
splendid adventure and for freeing them
from their miserable lives on earth.
HOW THE GAME WENT
Early on the party developed a reliance
on creative violence to solve complex
social problems, circumventing
characters and encounters by, in some
cases literally, cutting a path to the
Master. This resulted in an extreme
amount of ruin to both the landmarks of
the world, and in one case doomed an
entire country to almost certain death.
Every sacrifice of life became another
reason to escape the world, since their
crimes multiplied rapidly.
Because of this approach, the
encounter with the Master was one with
a bitter GM whose “perfect plot” had
been put in disarray. The villain’s
monologue became a rant detailing the
price paid by others throughout their
adventure. The irony of the party
attacking the Master for trying to assert
his will over the world through military
order and homogenization when they
had done just the same with extreme
use of power was laid bare.
The final battle was decisive. With the
party arrayed against him in his
stronghold, the Master transformed into
a giant wielding a classic military sabre.
Using aesthetic changes to the
Godbinder, I brought in various sand-
themed powers to disrupt the group,
before he was worn down by their
superior numbers. While the players
chose to return home afterward, there
was very little celebration. If anything
the group was solemn after the energy
of the encounter faded and their exit
from the world was described, as they
weighed the cost of their escape.
BIO
Numinous (she/they) is a trans game
dev and motion graphics artist who runs
and plays RPGs on the Gender Coffin, an
all trans RPG server. They can be found
on twitter @FWNuminous.
EXAMPLE GAME: Y2K APOCALYPSE CULT
THE GROUP
This is a one-off game using a non-
standard DIE game set of personas (see
next section). As such, it used the
reduced character sheets, and I gave
the players a more limited selection of
starting backgrounds. As the players
were international, I suggested that
they were an international camp of kids
who came together.
Did the group run with this? Oh, did they.
They’re all children who were at a camp
of apocalypse cultists awaiting the Y2k
rapture. The cult claimed that it would
end the world, and all the true believers
would get lifted up to a tech-heaven.
They gathered everyone in the next
village down from Portmeirion (where
classic 60s TV show The Prisoner was
filmed) to wait for the end of the world.
The cult leader was a big fan.
They all sat around and played role-
playing games while waiting for the
world to end. It didn’t. Everyone went
home and got on with their lives…
Susan (Suzy)
American. Then, a snotty punk rock kid
who thinks no good music was made
after she was born. Spent her time at
the camp rolling her eyes at the whole
thing. However, when the world didn’t
end, it entirely throws her. Clearly, to
rebel against something like that meant
that on some level she believed it, and it
left a void. Works as a coder now, and is
the person who has got the group
together for this reunion. Was called
“Suzy” then but prefers “Susan” now,
which everyone clearly constantly
forgets. Divorcee. Smokes.
Susan is the techhead in her day job and
a snotty punk? Sounds cyberpunk to
me. Neo.
Gwen
Parents were Welsh hippy luddites, so
grows up in an isolated place with very
little tech. Parents joined the cult less
out of actual belief, and more that
they’re similar anti-tech fellow
travellers. As such, Gwen tends to be a
bit bemused by the whole cult thing. As
part of the 70s hippy tradition, her
parents introduced her to D&D, so she
was the one who ran the game. She now
runs a yoga retreat in Wales, and has a
general wellness social-media sort of
approach to it. Recently divorced with a
kid and a dog. Has a naked goat tattoo.
Gwen was played by the most
experienced player in the room, so I
gave her the Dictator.
Purple
Italian with a very normal family –
except the aunt, who was a member of
the cult. Purple bought in entirely, and
ran away with her aunt to go there. The
first the family knew of where she’d
been was the TV coverage afterwards.
Her response to the cult failure was a
belief that it was just a mistake – the
world would end, but just in another
way, which she continued to explore. In
an interesting parallel with Gwen, she
also a yoga teacher, but hers is a less
grounded, more fanatical approach.
She’s bordering on being a cult leader
herself.
The player had never touched a game
before, but also expressed an interest in
playing someone who’ll get angry and
hit things. Emotion Knight.
Hansel Wunderschmidt
Firstly, let’s have a second of applause
for the player’s choosing Hansel’s
name. Hansel was a true believer, his
parents actually the two main public
mouthpieces of the cult. However, when
the cult failed to come true, it became
clear that the cosmetically-enhanced
parents were just scammers. Post-Cult
they continued in a similar vein, with
further scams. They were rich for
several years, until a deal got found out.
They were looking at prison, when both
died, under mysterious circumstances.
Hansel is a wannabe influencer, and
presently selling his memoirs of A Boy In
A Major Cult.
Hansel got given Godbinder – it’s the
least necessary choice, but sometimes
“what’s left over” is all that matters. The
player had expressed an urge to play
with magic, and I suspected he’d be
someone who’d enjoy talking to the
gods.
Holborn Perchance
Parents were believers, and so was
Holborn. But a little younger than the
rest, he approached it in a much lighter
fashion, not really getting “What the end
of the world” actually meant. As such,
he tended to make costumes out of
motherboards and stomp around. His
gleeful ranting to a newsteam (”UPLOAD
ME TO THE DATASPHERE!”) actually
made him a very early internet meme
star. It was 2000, so it was basically
him and the hamsterdance. Clearly, this
led to a lot of people laughing at him…
which Holborn takes in his stride. His
path has basically turned him into an
entirely sincere fringe spiritual /
conspiracy bod. Put it like this: Purple
and Holborn are both fringe cultists, but
no-one forwards Purple’s serious
theories to friends because they’re so
funny.
Fool. Holborn was clearly the Fool.
Patrick
Son of the leader of the cult, who
committed suicide shortly after the
failure of the prophecy. Named after
Patrick McGoohan, the lead of the
Prisoner. Has been very distant ever
since – the group isn’t mainly in touch,
but no one heard much about Patrick.
My character, playing the Master.
THE PREP
In a single session, I knew I couldn’t plan
carefully for each character’s own
desires. In the fifteen-minute break, I
looked at what I had. The background
had the advantage of a single traumatic
event connecting everyone – and
everyone’s own trauma was linked to it
intensely. Doing a setting that harked
back to that Y2k would give enough
resonance for everyone. With five
players, the sheer amount of
biographical detail means it would be
impossible to fit it all in a single session
anyway, so I was also planning for a
game that mostly based around the
Master’s persona’s desires. The players
going so big with the setting was a gift,
meaning that Patrick’s story would also
be their story.
What does Patrick want from Die
specifically? Does he want his dad
back? No – what he wants is what his
dad wanted to actually happen. As in, he
wants the world to end, so everyone
can go to their cult’s tech heaven. He
wants his dad, and everything he grew
up with, to be right. DIE has offered
Patrick a world that he can destroy. So,
as opposed to a standard Master who
wants to live in the realm, Patrick is
actually trying to destroy it.
So how is the old fantasy world being
destroyed? The idea is obvious. Y2k
bug? Fallen beetles and scarabs,
consuming everyone and all reality. In
the fantasy language, it’s an
apocalyptic threat, that’s emerging from
far beneath the earth to tear down
society.
As we basically have an hour and a half
to actually get through the adventure
part, I know there’s not really time for
more than a handful of encounters. I
think of a rough structure:
1) The arrival in Die. I drop the room the
personas are playing the game in
intact into the world… then have the
Fallen scarab starting to tear down
the walls, revealing they’re in a
tunnel system. Introduce the threat
of these “bugs”. It’s clearly a play on
the Y2K bug, as well as the techno-
utopian ideas of the cult. Fill the
whole environment with them, with
little ones just being scenery, while
the larger ones are threat. I’d use
the small ones more as an
atmospheric effect and a hint of bad
things to come.
2) When they leave the room, they’re in
a tunnel just beneath the capital city
of the fantasy world. I do no
preparation on this – I will ask
questions to the players about their
teenage RPG world, and then
subvert them. All important
information will be given to the
players, and they’ll be informed
other heroes have died in the
attempt to stop the Master and his
Father, who lie far beneath the
planet. How can they get there?
Likely, the city can teleport them
there, but the players may have
other ideas.
3) The final encounter. I have the image
of the father on the throne, and
Patrick prostate before him. Except
the players realise the father is
already dead, and Patrick is paying
homage to a corpse. The entire place
is covered by a carpet of bugs, also
paying homage. And here? We can
see all reality is being eaten. Give the
players a chance to approach the
problem however they wish –
Patrick’s initial take is “If reality
ends, we will all go to heaven.” Can
he be talked around? I have no idea,
but look forward to finding out.
I also get a quick grab bag of
atmospheric ideas – the Godbinder has
selected the God of Light, which I played
as a peppy utopian cyberpunk AI. The
actual Neo’s computer was basically
Clippy (”You look like you’re trying to
shoot someone in the head!”). That The
Prisoner is in their background means I
may lift some key images from the
Prisoner TV series – the iconic Rover
(the big white balloons) strikes me as
useful. Otherwise, I make do with asking
questions about the RPG world, then
integrating, and always harking back to
the Y2k stuff to give an aesthetic.
HOW THE GAME WENT
It seemed to work well enough. Phew.
ABOUT ME
I’m Kieron Gillen, and I am a word man.
CUSTOM MINOR MIRACLES AND SPELLS
When coming to polish the Arcana I hit
this section and winced. I knew it was
rough and ready, but it was just not
right, in any way. However, due to it
being referenced so much in the main
text, I realised that it had to be in here –
so I added some caveats, and decided
to let it go.
It simply didn’t do what I wanted it to do.
With DIE, there’s a need to try and be
quasi-objective in the inward rules. As
such, I wanted to try and create a solely
objective system for generating spells. I
was clearly being influenced by liking
90s computer role-playing and strategy
games like Lords of Magic and Legend,
where the player strung “nouns”
together and it all kicked in. So you’d
add a projectile to an explosion to a
projectile to a damage, and it created a
projectile which hit and then sent an
explosion of missiles streaming out.
Which is pretty nifty, and very much the
sort of game that Sol would have been
playing circa designing DIE.
Now, I knew that it wouldn’t be that
robust, as it’s not a computer game’s
clockwork perfection, but I hoped to get
something that held together in a fairly
coherent way.
And what I designed did. As far as it
went. Which wasn’t nearly far enough.
The main problems?
1) DIE’s system of target difficulty is
just too coarse to get fine
graduations in. If you’re selecting
from a list, and all options increase
their difficulty, add even a few and
you hit a number which not even
DIE’s hyper-competent spellcasters
can regularly cast.
2) When trying to simulate a
complicated spell, there’s not nearly
enough guidance on how all the
elements interact. Trying to add
some would be a huge job, and lead
to a system far more complicated
than anything else in the game.
So yeah. It just didn’t do what I wanted it
to do.
Luckily I then realised what I wanted it
to do is completely extraneous for what
DIE is.
What the following actually is: a way to
set a difficulty and some core in-game
effects for any basic RPG spell you’d like
to cast. That’s all it needs to be, and
that’s all it is.
Phew.
NOT USING THE FOLLOWING RULES
The Minor Miracles (and spells,
generally) are one of the most number-
heavy bits of DIE. The players don't
necessarily see it, so you can fudge it,
but a rule-of-thumb setup will be a
distinct turnoff for some GMs. If you're
one of them, limit the Godbinder to Major
Miracles and their pre-generated spells
on their character sheets. As in, treat
any magical effect not on their
character sheet as a Major Miracle, with
a relatively small cost. Kill a single
enemy? Do a small quest or cost a God
Debt or two. That kind of thing.
As a halfway house, there is a large list
of traditional RPG spells whose difficulty
level has been pre-calculated (and also
shows you how I generated their
difficulties according to the system).
These are useful spells to swap in and
out of a Godbinder’s character sheet if
they want to either switch their spells
for the already existing gods on the
sheet or generate a whole new god.
Using a Major Miracle for a Godbinder to
get access to another Minor Miracle
permanently is definitely an interesting
option, for example.
It’s worth noting that the pre-generated
miracles on the Godbinder sheet are one
point less expensive than they are when
generated by the systems. Your core
spells are simply easier to cast. If you
are replacing a Godbinder’s miracle with
one generated from these rules, you
should reduce its difficulty by one.
Basically, however you want your DIE
world to work is fine. All DIE worlds play
by their own rules, remember.
USING THE FOLLOWING RULES
Minor Miracles’ and spells’ difficulties
can be calculated by totalling the costs
of each individual element of a spell.
Yes, spells and Miracles are used
interchangeably in the text that follows.
Miracles means Minor Miracles.
Firstly, think of the spell and what you
want it to do. Or look at your favourite
RPG manual, and see a spell, and think
how that could work in a game of DIE.
The difficulty of a spell is created by
adding together the cost of its effect
and its limits.
Effects are specific core magical
abilities, like healing people or hurting
people or increasing stats or whatever.
Your choices here provide core rules
which can be integrated into the game.
Limits are what actually gets affected
by the effects – the range operated to,
how long it all lasts and so on.
Most effects and limits add one
difficulty each. There are some which
add more, as they’re relatively more
powerful. For zero difficulty, you
automatically get a Range of touch
and/or self, a Length of instantaneous,
and the number of Targets of one. Plus
nifty cosmetic visual effects. You can
have all the impressive sparkles you
want for free. Sparkles for everyone!
For example, consider the sturdy genre
classic Magic Missile. It flies through the
air to zap someone. Its effect is Damage
and its only Limit is Range. Looking down
the list, it does Damage at Range. That’s
one effect and one limit, meaning the
total difficulty to cast a Magic Missile
would be 2.
Minor secondary effects to a spell do
not affect difficulty as long as the
advantages and disadvantages even
out. If not, you should increase the
difficulty by one.
For example, transforming into an ursine
bear may give you an advantage on
attacks due to the considerable
advantage of being a fucking bear, but
will give you disadvantages to tasks like
opening doors, word-processing or
getting down at the local discotheque,
unless it caters to larger hairy men.
Sometimes spells have complicated
after-effects. The effects of these
should follow the narrative of what the
spell actually does.
For example, Cloud Kill summons a
massive cloud of necrotic gas which
fucks up people who breathe it in. It’s
easy enough to calculate its core value
– Death Damage as its effect; Ranged,
Large Area and Duration as its limits.
Duration, Death Damage and Ranged
cost 1 apiece, while Large Area costs 2,
leading to a hefty difficulty of 5.
However, while the rules explain how it
works in the opening attack round, how
does it affect people who choose to go
into it later?
That’s up to you when you design the
spell or to decide in play. I’d make any
character who passes through the gas
on their turn roll a Constitution test with
a difficulty of 5, taking one hit for every
point you fail by. Maybe you’d do
something else.
That’s the key thing. Let’s put it in bold.
The point of this system is to give you a
difficulty and some core rules for the
spells in the game. It is not meant to
limit what sort of spells you can create.
If something is clearly nonsense, don’t
do it.
REMIND ME WHAT THE DIFFICULTY
NUMBER IS ACTUALLY FOR
Sure. The difficulty is the target number
of successes the players’ dice pool
must match or exceed to successfully
catch the spell or miracle. Godbinders
base their dice pool on their Wisdom.
Masters base their dice pool on their
Intelligence. The rare magic-using Fool
uses either Intelligence or Charisma,
depending on the players’ preference.
QUICK AND DIRTY METHOD?
If you want the simplest rule of thumb to
generate a spell to keep in your head?
The following gets the vast majority of
the system, bar fringe cases.
If the spell does a thing, it’s difficulty 1. If
it does a thing to someone over there?
It’s difficulty 2. If it does a thing to a
bunch of people, it’s difficulty 2. If it
does a thing to a bunch of people over
there? It’s difficulty 3. If it does another
thing while doing the thing? Add one to
the difficulty. If it does the thing for a
while? Add 1 to the difficulty.
You’ll be fine.
I’M A PLAYER AND I’M GOING TO
MIN/MAX THIS TO FUCKING DEATH
These are experimental rules. I’m
showing how I’ve codified spell
difficulties. The point of these rules is to
try and ascertain what the difficulty
cost of a spell should be. As in, you sit
down, work out what elements could go
into a spell, and come up with a number.
The point is to work out what a spell
should cost, not to work out what the
system can let you get away with.
While these rules are mainly for the GM,
they’re also accessible to players.
Certain players are going to explicitly
look for things to exploit in the system,
and work out something ludicrously
powerful, impossibly cheaply.
Magic is supernatural, so against
scientific meddling. Gods are egotistical
beings, fickle, and liking of respect.
Neither like being treated like this.
If a GM believes a spell is actively trying
to exploit the system, the difficulty of
the spell is doubled.
LIMITS AND EFFECTS
Here’s a selection I’ve used for making
the spells.
The number in brackets is the cost. With
multiple numbers, that’s the cost for
multiple levels of it, with the implication
you can stack. As in, you buy level 1
before level 2 and then level 3. For
LIMITS
DISTANCE
Close Range (1)
Can be targeted at someone inside the
area of an average melee. Think ‘thrown
weapons’ range.
Medium Range (2)
Can be targeted at people outside of an
average melee. Think ‘reliable arrow or
gun’ range.
Far Range (3)
Can be targeted at people in sight.
DURATION
Duration (1)
The spell lasts for the length of an
average combat, unless countered in
some way.
Hour Duration (2)
The spell lasts for an hour.
Day Duration (3)
The spell lasts for a day, unless
countered.
Ongoing Duration (5)
The spell’s effect lasts indefinitely.
example, if level 1 is 1 difficulty, and level
2 is 3 difficulty, then to cast it at level 2,
it would be 4 difficulty.
You should feel free to create keywords
of your own. Beta rules, darlings. We are
highly hackable.
AREA
Area (1)
Affects everyone within sword-reach of
a target.
Large Area (2)
Affects everyone within around the area
of a sizeable room.
Extreme Area (3)
Affects everyone in a large area – about
the size of a hall.
When using an area effect, as well as
rolling to match the difficulty for casting
a spell, you also use the same number
of successes to compare to the target’s
resistance. For example, if it’s a
physical attack it’s usually their
defence. If it’s a mental attack, it’s
usually half a character’s Willpower,
rounded down. This means that an area
effect spell could actually affect some
targets in a region but not all of them.
For example, a player casts a sleep
spell. In the area are five henchmen and
a noble wizard. The henchpeople have a
Willpower of 4. The Wizard has a
Willpower of 7. The player needs three
successes to cast the spell. They
manage to roll three successes, casting
the spell. As this is more than half the
Willpower of the henchpeople, so they
fall asleep. As it is less than the Wizard’s
Willpower rounded down, the spellcaster
manages to stay awake as their allies
slump all around them.
When you cast an area effect, you can
only use each special once. You do not
get to use the special on everyone in the
group.
For example, a player casts a fireball on
five orcs with defence 1. The player rolls
a 6, two 4s and a 2. As the orcs have a
defence of 1, the player causes 3 hits on
each of them. However, as the player
only rolled one 6, they can only choose
to activate the fireball’s special (“Set a
target on fire”) once, meaning only one
orc is set on fire. Poor orc.
Universal
If you want to do a universal effect (as
in, affects everyone in the world you’re
in) you will be looking for a Major Miracle
(if you’re a Godbinder), a Cheat Token (if
you’re a Master – and likely not even
then) or a quest to find out how you can
actually achieve such a feat.
Selective (1 for Area, 2 for Large Area, 3
for Extreme Areas)
For an area effect, you can add
selectivity – so you can choose who
inside the area is affected by a spell or
not – at increasing costs. Worth noting –
if not selected, the character is included
in any negative effects of the spell.
For example, a Master casts a ball of fire
around themselves. Anyone nearby
them will be attacked by the spell. As
the Master didn’t add Selective to this
spell, it includes themselves.
Selective means actively in that moment
being able to choose who the spell
works on – as in, “friends” or “foes.” The
spell works on who the spellcaster
wants. Something which is not chosen
in such a way does not change
difficulty. For example, a fireball that
affects everyone who is not wearing a
fancy hat does not change its difficulty.
This rule may seem strange, but
Masters with rule-bending powers are
right shits.
NOTE ON AREA EFFECT AND HIGH
DIFFICULTY
It’s worth noting that in the present
system a spell which succeeds with a
high difficulty will always be highly
effective (i.e. a difficulty 4 attack spell
hitting a creature with defence of 1
means that any successful casting of
the spell will provide four hits).
This is primarily done for speed of play…
and also high difficulty spells are
extremely rare in the system, or at least
costly in terms of expending player
resources (like a Godbinder’s debt). As
they are so hard to succeed, we prefer it
to always be a big moment rather than
risking succeeding in casting your
ludicrous Cloud Kill (or whatever) spell
and then rolling badly for the attack and
it becoming an anti-climax.
If you dislike this, you can make a
spellcaster roll to cast the spell and
then roll again to see how successful
the attack is.
EFFECTS
Remember that narrative is the key
thing. If the spell as described does not
have an effect, it doesn’t damage. For
example, something immune to fire
would not be hurt by fire damage.
Something which doesn’t breathe is
likely immune to gas, and so on.
PETTY SPELLS (aka EFFECTLESS)
Most of the following effects are
relatively powerful, with even difficulty 1
simulating something as brutal as a
physical attack. There are many magical
effects that aren’t quite as dramatic,
such as creating light.
In this case, the effect cost is zero and
the spell is known as “Petty”. The cost
for all limits remains.
It’s suggested that for Petty Magic in a
non-combat situation, they’re
considered routine actions for any
trained magician, and so don’t require a
roll.
HEALING AND HURTAGE
Damage (1)
Causes harm to a target, identically to a
normal attack. There are also more
specialised alternates which add a
special to the attack, which are collated
at the bottom of the list.
Defence (2, 4, 6)
Adds a point of defence to the target.
The cost of this is “2” as it’s adding two
disadvantages on all attacks.
Abstractly, if you wanted to just add a
disadvantage (i.e. one bad dice) to an
attacking opponent’s dice pool, it would
cost a single point.
Counter-Attack (1)
Anyone in range of this spell who
attacks the target of the spell suffers a
1-success attack in retaliation.
For example, casting a Counter-Attack
spell on yourself would mean anyone
who is within touch range (i.e. in a melee
attack) would be hit by a 1-success
attack if they attacked you.
Heal (1)
Heals a target, with the number of
successes the amount of Health healed.
The maximum number of Health that can
be healed is limited to the number of
Heal effects you have added. As in, if
you add Heal to the spell multiple times
you can increase how much it heals.
You can only cast this spell once a day
on the same target, unless the target
has suffered a further wound.
TRANSFORMATION
The following three – Tweak, Alter and
Boost – are often used as part of
shapeshifting spells. As such, a
cosmetic effect can be added with no
extra cost. As per always, assuming
advantages and disadvantages even
out, there are no costs for them.
For example, earlier we gave the
example of turning into a bear, so
gaining an advantage on attacks due to
the considerable advantage of being a
fucking bear, but giving you
disadvantages to tasks like opening
doors, word-processing or getting down
at the local discotheque. The actual
"Turning into a bear" part is no extra
cost, as it is purely cosmetic.
It’s worth stressing that this lets you
transform your appearance in a general
way. If you want to transform it in a
specific way, the illusion keyword is
required. You want to turn into a bear?
This spell works. You want to turn into a
specific bear? You’ll need illusion.
Tweak (1)
Change which statistic is used in a rule.
For example, guard dice is normally
calculated by dexterity. A tweak spell
may change it so it’s calculated by
wisdom, traditionally higher in Masters
and Godbinders.
Alter (1,3,5)
Swap one higher statistic to another
lower statistic. At a higher level, you can
swap multiple lower abilities for one
higher one, with the higher one
becoming the level of the lowest.
For example, with Alter (1) a Godbinder
with Wisdom 4, Strength 2 and
Constitution 2 could cast a spell which
increased either Strength or
Constitution to 4 while Wisdom would
drop to 2. With Alter 2 – costing 3
difficulty – you could transform both
Strength and Constitution to 4 while
Wisdom would drop to 2.
Boost (1,3.5)
Add one to a characteristic. No matter
what the source, lesser level abilities do
not stack – you can’t cast a Boost three
times to add 3 to your abilities.
Curse (1,3,5)
Reduces a given statistic by one to a
minimum of one. If you reduce
Constitution, you reduce your Health
maximum, and so reduce the maximum
number of Health dice you can presently
have. Like Boost, these do not stack.
For example, a player with Constitution
2 has 2 Health. They have been hit, and
now only have 1 Health. They suffer a
curse aimed at their Constitution,
reducing it by 1. They can only have 1
Health. However, as they only have 1
Health, they do not lose a further 1. If
they had been cursed before being
wounded, they would have lost that
Health.
GENERAL MAGICAL STUFF
Language (1)
Communicate with something you
couldn’t before.
Illusion (1)
You can make the subject of the spell
appear exactly as you wish, including
specific things. Despite the keyword
name, if the appearance has no physical
advantages – as in, no stat changes,
and its advantages and disadvantages
level out – the change can be actually
physical. It also includes literal illusions,
including light.
Mental Attack (1,3)
Alter the emotional state of the target,
like a Dictator (See the “Running the
Dictator” section). Each success
changes the emotional state by 1. The
first level of this ability lets you change
the state (“It can make someone
angry”) and the second lets you add a
target (“It can make someone angry at a
specific subject”). It should be stressed
that hitting the difficulty means you
manage to change the effect by 1 level,
with each extra success being another
level. As such, while spellcasters can
mimic Dictators’ abilities, they are far
more limited.
Counterspell (1)
Cancels a single ongoing spell effect. If
the spell has an ongoing difficulty (like a
barrier), that’s its difficulty to cancel.
Detect (1)
The player will be informed whether a
specified something is near or not.
Detect Magic, Detect Orcs, Detect
Nearby Discos that are Welcoming to
Ursine Groovers. All under this.
Summon (1,3,5)
Summons a creature who is under your
control for the duration of the spell.
Summon Level 1 will summon a creature
who has all stats at 2, and some
advantages and disadvantages on skills
(for example, a wolf who has 2 on all
stats and an advantage on biting and
tracking, but a disadvantage on
basically everything else; or a cute tech
robot who has an advantage on coding
and reading stuff, but a disadvantage
on anything involving violence).
Summon Level 2 will summon a creature
who has two stats of a 3, and the rest 2,
plus the array of advantages and
disadvantages.
Summon Level 3 will summon a creature
who has two stats of 4, with a similar
array of advantages and
disadvantages.
Creatures can be defined according to
the systems as described in the
“Preparing The Second Session”
section.
Major Weaknesses (-1)
You can reduce the difficulty of
summoning a creature by one if it has
significant weaknesses – as in, its
weaknesses are much worse than its
advantages.
Barrier (1)
Summons an obstruction that prevents
anyone from traversing it. The number
of successes equals the total difficulty
required to traverse it. The nature of the
spell and narrative determines what
statistics or abilities could be used to
traverse it – or avoid it entirely.
For example, a Master summons a
tower of rock which pushes them into
the sky. They roll three successes. The
GM determines that a player can use
their strength dice pool to try and climb
it, like anything else. The Neo, who can
teleport, says they should be able to just
teleport up there. The GM agrees, so
circumventing the task entirely.
Free Movement (1/3)
Level 1 removes one limitation on
movement. The higher level removes
two limitations on movement. Define this
broadly.
Climbing walls freely like a spider? A
level 1 spell. Levitation? Also a level 1
spell. Flying? A level 3 spell.
Sense Blank (1)
Target is no longer possible to be
sensed by a single sense. For each level
of the spell, you can lose a single sense.
For example, to become invisible is a
single level. To become invisible and not
smell, it would be 2 levels. If you attack
anyone when this spell is active, the
spell cancels.
STUNS
The ability which stops people doing
stuff. There’s two sorts of stun. Stun
either wears off or can easily be
negated by an outside action. The way
something can be negated depends
upon the fiction of the spell.
Paralyse (1)
The classical RPG stun which wears off,
but cannot easily be negated.
Sleep (1)
The classical RPG stun which does not
wear off, but can easily be negated.
A Stun spell is resisted by half its
target’s Willpower, rounded down. The
amount a stun beats its Wisdom is the
number of rounds a target is stunned.
“Easily negated” tends to mean actions
not based on successful rolls – for
sleep, merely shaking a shoulder or
making a lot of noise will wake the
people. “Not easily negated” can include
a target rolling their Wisdom in a round
to try and overcome the paralysis, with
the number of rounds remaining to be
the target. Clearly, if it’s only a single
round, there is no need to do this.
If a spell’s form of Stun has a downside
as well as an upside, you may also use
the Stun keyword for all of it.
For example, a temporary turn to stone
could work as a Stun, as long as the
target is basically invulnerable while
stunned. The target loses the ability to
roll Willpower to try and snap out of it,
but gains invulnerability, so it basically
evens out.
DAMAGE POWERS
If a spell or miracle has multiple damage
effects, it can use any of their specials.
This section is especially one which your
friend, the Gamesmaster, encourages
you to expand as you see fit.
Fire Damage
As damage, but adds “Special: if this
attack does a wound, the target is on
fire and suffers 1 wound every round
until the flames are extinguished”.
Light Damage
As damage, but adds “Special: this
attack blinds the target, meaning they
suffer two disadvantages on all tasks
involving sight until their sight is
returned".
Plant Damage
As damage, but adds “Special: this
attack immobilises the target until they
either free themselves or are freed”. The
difficulty of this task should equal the
number of successful specials that
have been activated on the target.
Death Damage
As damage, but adds “Special: this
attack curses the target, reducing their
strength by one for the remainder of this
encounter”.
Pain Damage
As damage, but adds “Special: gain
disadvantage due to pain for the rest of
the encounter”.
Light Boost
As Boost, but also adds “Special: if
target is attacking an undead monster
each hit causes two hits” to their
attacks.
Gas Damage
As damage, but adds “Special: if hit
bypasses Guard”. Also, one whose
name will likely make players snicker,
bless ‘em.
SPELLBOOK
Here are some classical RPG spells
transformed into the language of DIE.
For more examples see the DIE
archetype sheets for the Godbinder and
the Master, but remember those core
abilities have a difficulty of one less
than the system described above.
Flash of Light (No Effect) = Difficulty 0
Makes a momentary flash of light.
Illusion counts as “light” for our
purposes. It’s a minor effect, so has no
cost.
Light (No Effect, Duration) = Difficulty 1
Makes some manner of glowing light
that lasts for an encounter. It’s worth
noting that as there’s no limit to casting
spells, this can be updated indefinitely.
Also, as it’s petty magic, it shouldn’t
require a difficulty roll as it’s a routine
task.
Detect Magic by Touch (Detect) =
Difficulty 1
The GM will reveal if an object the player
is touching is magical.
Detect Magic (Detect, Area) = Difficulty 2
The GM will reveal what, if anything, in
this vicinity is magical. If you want to
make them carry on glowing, it’d be
difficulty 3 to add a duration.
Summon Servant (Summon,
Disadvantage -1, Duration) = Difficulty 2
Summons a helpful servant and can do
anything a person could do... but cannot
do anything at all violent.
Speak To Ghosts (Language, Duration) =
Difficulty 2
Ghosts may speak your language, but
there are barriers like the whole being
dead thing, right?
Magic Missile (Damage, Ranged) =
Difficulty 2
A magical projectile which will hurt
someone up to medium range.
Mimic (Illusion, Duration) = Difficulty 2
Transforms to be visually identical to
someone else. You gain none of their
special abilities or statistics.
Sleep (Stun, Range, Area) = Difficulty 3
Makes anyone in a given area go to
sleep.
Fire Armour (Defence, Counter-Attack,
Duration) = Difficulty 3
Covers yourself with magical burning
armour for the length of a combat.
Increases Armour by 1. Does 1 damage to
anyone attacks you.
Fireball (Fire Damage, Range, Area) =
Difficulty 3
Creates a fiery explosion within medium
range, affecting everyone in a small
area. The attack has “Special: if this
attack does a wound, the target is on
fire and suffers one wound every round
until the flames are extinguished”.
Summon Wolf (Summon, Duration) =
Difficulty 2
Summons a wolf (all stats 2, advantage
on wolf stuff, disadvantage on non-wolf
stuff) for the length of an encounter.
Summon Monster (Summon 3 (5),
Duration) = Difficulty 6
Summons an enormous threatening
monster to serve you for one combat.
(Strength 4, Constitution 4)
Tanglevine (Plant Damage, Area,
Selective) = Difficulty 3
Makes vines burst from all sides near
the caster, tearing down at his enemies.
Attack everyone: attack all enemies in
close area to caster. Add “Special:
immobilize”.
Cage (Distance, Barrier, Duration) =
Difficulty 3
Wraps a barrier around the target, with
the number of successes of the spell
equalling the difficulty for the target to
escape.
Transform Into A Bear (Alter 3, Duration)
= Difficulty 4
You become an actual bear. Your
Constitution and Strength are increased
to the level of your wisdom, while your
wisdom drops to the level of whichever
is lowest between Constitution and
Strength. Lasts for one encounter. You
gain advantages and disadvantages
appropriately.
Bless (Area, Boost, Duration) = Difficulty
3 Duration) = Difficulty 2
Gives everyone +1 strength who is near
you at the moment of casting for the
length of a combat. This is everyone in
the area. If it’s a selective area, it will be
difficulty 4.
Alternative Bless (Area, Boost, Duration)
= Difficulty 3
Gives anyone who is presently standing
near the caster +1 strength for the
duration for one encounter. This is
primarily to show that the same
keywords can have significantly
different effect.
Wither (Curse, Duration) = Difficulty 2
Anyone you touch reduces their
strength by one for the duration of the
combat. They resist with their Wisdom. If
the spell succeeds but the target resists
its, they suffer a disadvantage on
strength tasks for their next turn.
The “if the target resists” bit is just
codifying “always feel free to interpret a
partial success” part of the main rules.
It’s included here to get you thinking
about other similar situations.
Group Wither (Curse, Duration,
Selectivity, Area) = Difficulty 4
Makes all enemies nearby get -1
Strength. The target difficulty is the
Wisdom of the individual.
Alternative Group Wither (Curse,
Duration, Area, Range) = Difficulty 4
Makes all people at a distance in a
group suffer -1 Strength. The target
difficulty is the Wisdom of the individual.
Divine Light (Ranged, Blind Damage,
Double Damage) = Difficulty 3
Divine light which strikes a nearby
individual. Special: double damage on a
wound inflicted. Special: blinds target.
Personal Force Shield (Transform,
Makes Wisdom rather than Dexterity
generate Guard dice for the length of
the combat.
Another Personal Force Field (Defence,
Duration) = Difficulty 3
Increases your defence by 1, lasting for
the length of the combat.
Cure (Heal) = Difficulty 1
Can heal Health to touch. Only 1 health
can be recovered per day if the target
hasn’t been wounded since.
Greater Healing Touch (Heal, Heal, Heal)
Difficulty = 3
As above, but up to 3 Health can be
recovered at once.
Healing Power (Heal, Distance) =
Difficulty 2
Heals an individual nearby, with a single
Health recovery max.
Group Heal (Heal, Area) = Difficulty 2
Heals everyone nearby, including
enemies. To make it selective would be
difficulty 3 (Heal, Area, Selectivity). Can
only heal a single health point to each
character.
Spiderwalk (Free Movement, Duration) =
Difficulty 2
You can climb any surface for the length
of a combat.
Flight (Free Movement 2 (3), Duration) =
Difficulty 4
You can fly freely at running speed for
the length of a combat.
Intangible (Free Movement, Duration) =
Difficulty 2
Allows you to move freely through
objects for the length of a combat. You
can’t do fancy tricks like walking on air
or beneath the ground. Not in keywords,
but I’d say you can neither be hit by
normal weapons nor hit anyone with
normal weapons, as that averages out.
Invisibility (Sense Blank, Duration) =
Difficulty 2
Turns the caster invisible for the length
of a combat. If they attack, the spell
cancels.
Cloud Kill (Range, Distance, Duration,
Area, Gas Damage) = Difficulty 5
Creates an area of noxious gas, away
from you, harming everyone in the area.
It persists for the length of the combat.
Anyone entering (or remaining) in the
area must make a Constitution test with
difficulty 5 to avoid suffering damage
equal to the amount they fail the test by.
You’ll note that only the first bit of the
spell is defined by the keywords – the
latter is my extrapolation of how the
rules for a big ol’ cloud of evil gas could
work. If you want it to fill a whole room,
this would be difficulty 6, as you’d need
the Large Area keyword.
MINOR EXTRA RULES
INCAPACITATION, DEATH AND INJURY
If you’re trying a campaign, the death-
happy way of play may be
unsatisfactory. You maybe don’t want
to be a Fallen that regularly. Here are a
couple of extra rules to make death less
likely. One is light and the other is more
rules-y.
LIGHT
If a character is reduced to zero, they
are unconscious.
If a character is reduced to a negative
value, they are dying. Characters only
actually die at the end of a combat if
their health hasn’t been brought up to at
least one via healing during that time.
You may allow a healer an extra action
to try and heal someone at the end of a
combat.
NOT AT ALL LIGHT
If a character's hit dice falls to zero,
they are out of the fight, but still
conscious. To act at all requires a
Constitution test with a difficulty of 2. If
they can act, any action is performed
with three disadvantages.
In practice, it is safe to assume that all
but the most motivated characters will
lie there and have a good cry.
If a character suffers any damage when
on zero hit dice or receive more Health
than they have hit dice, note the number
of excess Health.
If they received only 1 excess Health
loss, they are simply unconscious. They
are unaware of their surrounding and
can't do anything, except breathe and
maybe whimper a bit.
If they received two excess Health, they
are unconscious and injured. They
remain injured even if they recover hit
dice by healing. The injury should be
defined in the narrative – for example, a
broken arm, a lost finger, a chest
wound. An injured character has two
disadvantages on any challenge the
injury would interfere with. For all other
challenge rolls, they suffer one
disadvantage.
Some tasks may be simply impossible
with a given injury.
For example, Fragile Findus with a
broken arm would suffer a
disadvantage on any combat-related
challenges or (er) typing. For everything
else – charming people, remembering
ancient lore, everything – they suffer
one disadvantage. Being injured is just
distracting. Equally, due to only having
one active arm, this character could not
wield a two-handed weapon or
undertake other similar tasks.
It should be noted you can have multiple
injuries, which should be listed
separately. For example, Injury: Broken
Arm and Injury: Sucking Chest Wound.
If they received 3 excess Health, they
die instantly and often messily.
Any future Health losses suffered by the
character are treated exactly the same
as the above. One excess would do
nothing, as they're already unconscious.
Two excess Health will add an injury.
Three excess Health will kill them.
If a character receives three Injuries,
they also die.
It's worth stressing the general principle
of “If something is reasonable, it should
just happen” remains. For example, if
someone is unchivalrous enough to slit
someone's throat, you should probably
skip the dice rolling and just kill the
victim. Shooting at someone from
across the room may require a hit roll to
deliver hits – though normally with
advantages due to the immobility of
their foe. In this, and all things, the GM
should ascertain whether they think
something is reasonable or not, and
once they have decided it’s reasonable,
it remains reasonable (and repeatable)
for the whole game.
RECOVERY FROM INJURY
If an injured character receives
successful treatment the injury is now a
Treated Injury. The character receives a
disadvantage on any challenge that's
directly linked to the injury. Certain
tasks may remain impossible until the
injury is fully healed.
Fragile Findus has his broken arm
treated. He now only suffers one
disadvantage in combat challenges or
(er) typing. He now has no problems
charming people, remembering ancient
lore, everything else. He still can't wield a
two-handed weapon. Seriously? Do I
need to say this? Really?
CHEATING IN FAVOUR OF THE PLAYERS
DIE is based on the idea that the
universe is relatively objective. The
players are just characters like any
others, and their advantages and
disadvantages are based entirely on
their unique state – namely, that they've
got these massively powerful magical
artefacts – the eponymous dice.
However, this causes a conflict with a
classical GM move. GMs have been
known to cheat on rolls to favour the
player if the alternative would break the
game or be boring. Alternatively, some
GMs have been known to cheat to save
an NPC from death when there's a more
interesting plot ahead.
I’m shocked, shocked, I say.
Generally speaking, we encourage
letting the dice speak, but there may be
times you wish to cheat in favour of the
players in a quasi-objective manner.
If you do so, the Master gains a Cheat
Token.
Yes, DIE’s dedication to quasi-
objectivity is as such that we include
rules to justify where the GMs cheat.
STORY STRUCTURE FOR BEGINNERS
Okay, experienced RPG folks will see
exactly how they'll take the various
personality traits and dreams of the
generated personas. Others will be, to
use the technical gaming terms, shitting
themselves. How the hell are they going
to generate some emotional arcs for
these people?
Firstly, don't worry. If the players just
have a dungeon adventure in another
world before going home? That'll be fun.
Remember the first principle: people
getting together and doing stuff they
enjoy is enough. Don't beat yourself up
too hard. Sometimes it's not an evening
for melodrama. Sometimes it's just
mellow. Don't make it into a drama.
Secondly, let me tell you about what
9/10ths of my day job is.
I throw balls in the air and catch them.
This is a mode of writing that I first
heard described by Neil Gaiman. You
mention something earlier in a story? As
long as you pay that off at some point
down the line, the audience will read it
as a meaningful story. More than that –
a clever story. Hell, throw a ball at the
start of the story, and catch it three
years later, and they'll think you're some
kind of genius. Likely, you're not. You
just remembered there was a ball up
there that you've got to prevent hitting
the floor.
(Honestly, in that case, you'll probably
do best to explicitly remind the readers
multiple times that you know the ball is
in the air, as otherwise they'll think
you've forgotten it, and likely will have
forgotten it themselves.)
This is a little like Chekhov's gun, but I
much prefer the terminology of the
juggler as it doesn't involve the fiction. It
places you outside the fiction with you
manipulating it, which is exactly how it
works.
Where Gaiman was simplifying is that
there's all sorts of ways to throw a ball.
Most of what he's talking about are big
obvious throws. You show the audience
the ball and send it into the air. For
example, in The Fugitive, “Who is the
one-armed man?” is a huge ball. It's
what the story is about. If you never get
around to doing something about that
one-armed man, the audience is going
to going to be lost, confused and
disappointed.
There's a second kind of ball, which you
throw casually, in ways so the audience
don't realise that a ball is being thrown.
They remember the setup, but don't
realise it's actually set up. My favourite
example of this is in Hot Fuzz, where
Pegg's cop is mocked by the two
detectives with the memorable line “If
you want to be a big cop in a small town,
you can fuck off down the model
village.” Audience laughs hard, story
continues. An hour later, the climactic
fistfight happens in the model village.
It's a delightful scene, but it's even more
delightful as the audience remember –
oh yeah! The model village!
There's a third kind of ball, which is the
sneaky literary ball. This is thrown so
quietly that barely anyone would ever
notice it in a first read. This is a ball that
is only noticeable on a reread. It's
unlikely the audience will remember it,
as it's taken initially as just detail. It's
when you come back to it that you see
what you thought was just throwaway
detail was actually key, and your
understanding of the work explodes.
How does this apply to us?
RPGs are solely interested in the first
two kinds of balls. You don't get to
reread RPGs, so only things which the
players are consciously aware of are
useful. I write that, and am now chewing
over how Actual Play recordings change
that bit of advice. Hmm.
With DIE the persona generation is the
players throwing you balls.
The first kind of ball – the big balls – are
the huge character traits. If a persona's
lover died tragically and they're
distraught over it? That will inevitably
form part of the story. If you don't, they'll
be disappointed. The big balls are the
player telling the GM what sort of story
they want to play.
The second kind of ball – the sneaky
balls – are the ones that the players
almost don't realise they're saying for
their persona. Just little details. What's
their favourite TV show? Where did they
go on holiday as a kid? How they are
very into Mars bars. These are the
details they will be amazed with when
they end up showing up in the story.
They're also the details you can pick and
choose from according to your
interests, because the players will not
be expecting them to turn up, and not
mind when they all don’t.
You take all the big balls, and want to
use them at some point. The sneaky
balls are the spice. You don't have to
use them. You get to pick and choose
what amuses you, what combines with
those big balls in interesting ways.
Put it this way. A character talking about
their lost love and someone who looks
like their lost love turns up? That'll work
as a meaningful scene. But, if due to
some pre-game chat where a character
makes a Breaking Bad joke, they enter
Die and come across the Breaking Bad
Winnebago and their lost love is now
Heisenberg and they want you to join
their drug empire? That's something
else, and pure DIE.
As a rough guideline to appearing
clever, combining one big ball and one
sneaky ball will give you something
passably original.
If players only give you big balls, you
can get a similar effect by combining
the big ball with a generalised fantasy
trope. Or, to give the most obvious
example, mash their lost love into
Galadriel/Aragorn and you're sorted.
In short: the arch plot of DIE is robust
enough to support whatever
personalised material you add to it. You
don't need to worry too much. You just
need to catch a few balls.
Yes, the word “ball” has lost all meaning
now.
“NOTHING HAPPENED”
When I see people talking about comics
(and not always mine) a fairly common
complaint is “nothing happened”. A
naïve reading would take that as “There
was no progression of plot.” This would
be often correct, but not always. As
always, turn to Oscar Wilde: all criticism
is autobiography. When they say
“nothing happened” what they mean is
“nothing happened... that I am
interested in”. This means the “nothing
happened” speaks to the reader’s own
aesthetic preferences. Sometimes it
means “I get no sense of characters’
personal arcs progressing.” Sometimes
it means “no one punched each other”.
This, as a working creator, is sometimes
somewhat frustrating. Clearly, you
wrote stuff happening that you thought
was interesting. That's why you wrote it.
Of course, that doesn't matter. If it
doesn't work for someone, it doesn't
work for someone. They're allowed their
own aesthetic preferences.
Leading back to RPGs generally and DIE
specifically, you have an advantage.
You have the audience in front of you.
You can see what is appealing to what
individual, and thus you can tailor the
experience to them. It is unlikely that
any tone or approach you take will
satisfy the whole group equally, so
being aware of what is appealing to
each player (and when they haven't had
anything to appeal to them for a while)
is key.
This is particularly important as we
reach the conclusion of the adventure.
The climax of a DIE adventure will likely
be chaotic, and you should be looking to
give all characters a chance to be
involved with it. For some players, it's
giving an opportunity to close the
emotional arc of their damaged
relationship with their estranged parent
figure. With other players, it's making
sure they get a chance to hit the big
baddie with their glowing magic sword.
With others, it's both. Nothing wrong
with emotional closure at sword-point.
It need only be a grace note, but having
something in the final encounter which
is 100% theirs does a lot to make a
player feel like their journey meant
something, and walk away from the
table thinking of not just the story, but
their story, ensuring they feel that their
time was worthwhile and Something
Happened.
ENCOUNTER LOGIC
When trying to explain how to construct
an adventure I worked out a way to
create a checklist of what was needed
for a game. The more games I ran, the
less I thought it was essential. Still… I
want to show this to folks and see what
they make of it.
So… as you're developing encounters,
here's a useful way to break down the
sorts of encounters and how they tie
together. This is a way to develop a
necessary backbone for the game - in
practice, it’s merely a more elaborate
version of: “Where are they at the start?
Where are they at the end? What’s to
stop them from getting from the former
to latter?”
This is an “Elements of an Adventure”
checklist to ensure there is a core
structure. Further detail on each one
follows underneath.
1) Doors
2) Chests
3) Keys
4) Signposts
5) Smoke Machines
6) Menus
7) Specific Details of the Encounter
ELEMENTS OF AN ADVENTURE
1) DOORS
A problem which means you cannot
progress in this direction unless
circumvented in some way. A Locked
Door is the classic example of a door. To
open it, you need to open it with a key.
Or something that can bash it down. Or
someone to open it from the other side.
Or any other way a player could work
out to get past it.
It doesn't have to be so literal. A
monster that won't let you pass is
effectively a door too, though the player
won't necessarily realise that it's a door
that has a key. A monster could state
that it wants gold to let you pass, which
makes its “door” nature clearer, but
most monsters could desire something
that would let you get past them.
Whatever that is, that is their key. Some
doors don't have keys and need to be
bashed down with force. In other words,
any monster encounter which blocks
your progress is a door.
A well-signalled door tells players to
work out what to do to get past it, and
can logically guide them into side-
quests. A monster that says it wants its
memories of a lost love back, when the
players saw a lost-memory emporium
previously on their travels, implies a
course of action which doesn't involve
hitting the monster.
Doors are what create the structure and
pace of your adventure. The more you
have, the harder it will be to get to the
final encounter.
If you want to create a hard problem for
the player, you can create a door with a
necessary key. This means that it is
almost impossible to circumvent. A key
is definitely required. For example, a
magical door will only open with a
certain unique magical key. It is
indestructible otherwise.
(We could enter a philosophical
argument over whether any door is truly
necessary. This is videogame thinking
with one solution. I would advise always
being slightly flexible. Even for the
above, perhaps the players work out a
way to create a convincing fake, etc. If it
leads to an interesting adventure, it's
good.)
For example, in Lord of Rings, the door
to enter Moria is a door. As is the Balrog
– it is effectively a door which stops you
leaving Moria.
2) CHESTS
A problem which does not block the
players’ progress. A chest in a room sits
there, and you can just ignore it and
carry on your way. The classic example
of a chest is a Locked Chest. You can
find its key and unlock it. You can pick
its lock. You can break it open. You can
do pretty much anything to get inside it.
Once more, be less literal. A casual, non-
threatening monster sitting in the room,
relaxing, who has the memories of
another monster’s lost love in its back
pocket is a chest. A merchant selling
things is a chest. A seer who knows the
weakness of the Master’s greatest
champion is a chest.
Chests primary use is to contain Keys.
For example, the ents of Fangorn having
a big old chat are a chest. The hobbits
strictly speaking needn’t have
interacted with them that much, but if
they did, they can then have them
attack Orthanc.
3) KEYS
A thing which solves a problem the
player faces, allowing progress. The
classic example of a key is a key, which
unlocks its matching lock. Once more,
we need not be so literal. A key could be
a magical chant, a rare item, making two
warring families be at peace, or simple
and necessary information. A password
is obviously a key... but so is someone
revealing the actual location of
something you're looking for.
Keys are usually rewards. They are
often found in chests. They are rarely
left lying around, but you never know.
The sword Arthur tugged from a stone
worked pretty well, though, strictly
speaking in our terminology, the Sword
in the Stone is a chest.
It's worth noting what isn't included in
this list, which is treasure. You can
absolutely give players treasure, but
this is not actually a structural concern.
The only treasure you need to consider
at the large-scale planning stage is that
which solves future problems. Namely,
keys.
For example, the ents realising that
Fangorn has been cut down by
Saruman is a key.
4) SIGNPOSTS
Exposition is a dirty word, but some is
needed to orientate. The signpost
provides useful information to the
player, with no cost. The classic
example of a signpost is a signpost,
which presents its information to you if
you look at it. Once more, there is no
need to be so literal. The bartender who
tells the players that the Master who
rules the dungeon lives on the lowest
level is also a signpost.
(The bartender who needs to be
convinced to give you that information,
of course, is a chest.)
This information may be a key to unlock
a door or a chest. It is perhaps more
likely it will be used to point players in
the direction of a problem.
For example, Gandalf turning up to tell
Frodo everything about this big scary
ring and what they have to do to get rid
of it is a signpost.
5) SMOKE MACHINES
Sometimes an encounter is about the
vibe, man. It differs from a signpost in
that it is not meant to provide
information. It is meant to provide
feelings. This is something which exists
to present a creepy idea or mood, and is
not necessarily even meant to be
interacted with. The classic example of
a smoke machine is a smoke machine, a
device which pumps out a lot of fake
smoke which makes everyone feel like
things are well moody. Other smoke
machines include rooms full of faceless
children typing out lists of things their
parents did which made them feel guilty.
For example, every fucking song in Lord
of the Rings is a Smoke Machine.
6) MENUS
Where the players are presented with
an either/or choice. The classic example
of a menu is a menu, which lists various
options of food you can eat. These are
common in fantasy.
For example, King Arthur choosing
between a magical sword and a magical
scabbard.
They are also common in Buzzfeed
quizzes, in terms of deciding whether
you are more like Thanos or Rocket
Racoon, or what Hogwarts school you
belong to. Our menus are likely to range
from which magical ally will join you on
the quest to defeat the Master, to
whether you’d rather stroke your dead
cat or dead dog one more time. DIE is a
game of many tones, and Sophie's
Choice is always an option.
Menus also include moral choices, as
anyone who's ever played a Bioware
RPG will tell you.
For example, Galadriel deciding not to
take the one ring is a menu. Galadriel is
the clear lead character of Lord of the
Rings, natch.
Chests and doors will be the majority of
your real encounters. These are
encounters which are likely to slow the
player in a meaningful way. Chests,
because they will likely be engaged with
to get a key (or just out of nosiness) and
doors because they will literally prevent
progress.
Smoke machines and signposts are
unlikely to be sizeable encounters.
Signposts are required for the logic of a
dungeon to connect things. Smoke
machines, by definition, do nothing bar
create mood. It's worth noting that this
means they are not connected to the
necessary path of the scenario – but it's
certainly possible they could escalate to
something bigger. A roomful of dragon
corpses, each wearing the jerseys of
your old school football team, may be
atmosphere. If someone tries to raise
them from the dead, that changes to
something more active. Smoke
machines are useful things to have to
throw into the story to taste.
Menus can be sizeable encounters, or a
smaller one. It's likely a menu is the end
of a story for a player. It's worth noting
menu ideas can often be effectively
merged with the final encounter. The
heart of the final encounter is a menu
encounter. It's worth noting that menus
are perhaps one of the more advanced
sorts of encounters. Don't feel you're
doing it wrong if your logic structure
only includes chests, keys and doors.
There is one signpost which is pretty
much necessary – to make the players
know what they have to do to go home.
For example, consider a GM who has sat
down and worked out a structure first.
The GM decided that the final
confrontation with the Master is in their
secret lair. The players can't get there,
so the GM needs to make up an
encounter that is a door to stop the
players getting there. They want their
game to have three main encounters. So
as the door is one, they add two chests
each of which provides a key. Both keys
are needed to open the locked door. Oh
– they also realise they need something
to point the players in the right direction
to the secret lair, so they'll need a
signpost scene.
That means they need ideas for three
sizeable encounters (the two chests
and the door) and a signpost to have a
backbone for their game. Ideas for more
signpost or smoke machine scenes
could be fun to have additionally, as
they rarely slow the players down. An
idea for another door scene could also
be useful. The GM hasn't thought
enough about the characters yet to
know if a menu could be useful, but
they’ll progress with that in mind.
In practice, I suspect most
Gamesmasters are the sort to look at a
map and then work out the encounter
rather than vice versa, but it takes all
sorts.
7) SPECIFIC DETAILS OF THE
ENCOUNTER
The GM now only needs to fill in the
details of what the challenges are in
each of these encounters.
How much detail do you actually need?
As much (or little) detail as required to
be able to play them out. Do this for
every encounter, including the climactic
encounter. Be aware that this is a spine
– it’s entirely possible your climax will be
elsewhere. These is your preparation,
remember - it’s not the game. Things not
going to plan is the plan.
For any given encounter, it’s possible
you will have an idea for an encounter
based on the persona’s temptations. If
not, it’s likely you already have a detail
suggested by the locale. If an encounter
is set in a fantasy version of the kitchen
of your house, or the Egyptian Hall of the
British Museum, by the Nine of Swords
or a large room in an old computer game
with 396 Berserkers in, that implies
something about what happens when
the players arrives there.
The second part is combining it with one
of the players' backgrounds. This can be
a minor detail or a major one. Meeting
Grima Wormtongue or Bart Simpson may
be a minor detail. Meeting your dead
lover is likely a major one. Think about
what emotional journey each persona is
on.
For an encounter, it’s possible you will
need some statistics for the players to
interact with. It’s worth noting this is not
always necessary. It is also possible
you will need to pull a character out of
your posterior during a game. Either
way, the following is a useful
methodology for making other people…
DESIGNER NOTES
There’s been a lot of me talking about
the game and games in general, but this
is very much “Hey, Kieron, wtf you doing
here, man?”
My primary aims were to:
1) Support the themes of the comic in a
different format.
2) Be as accessible as possible.
These broke down in a few areas.
ACTUALLY DO “DIE: THE RPG”
Back when I was a games journalist, I
had a theory. Namely, that the most
interesting licensed videogames
weren’t ones which tried to simulate the
specific experience of whatever they
were licensing, but were the ones which
simulated the general experience.
The example I always used, despite
having virtually no experience with it,
was the old 1980s Spectrum version of
Alien. It’s a strategy/horror game where
you have your crew aboard ship, and
are trying to identify and terminate the
eponymous alien. Except it does things
like randomise who is infected by the
alien at the start and so on – which
really pushes it a little closer to making
a game of The Thing, but I digress. Point
being, it’s less acting out the specific
experience of Ripley and friends, and
more taking the vague scenario and
then making it your own.
Designing DIE, that’s what I wanted to
do. Not to make an RPG of the DIE
setting specifically, but make an RPG
about creating a group of messy real-
world people and dropping them into a
fantasy world that’s been shaped by
their lacks and obsessions and then see
whether they want to stay or not. A set
situation – the rules remain constant in
terms of whether to go home, but god
knows how many outcomes.
Honestly, this is the stuff that I’m most
pleased with. In terms of how it turned
out. The structure basically operates as
I wanted it to. Phew.
PRETENSIONS TO OBJECTIVITY
There’s a popular movement in RPG
game design towards player-facing
game. Generally speaking, I’m into it.
One of the key things is that the
Gamesmaster (if there’s one) never rolls
any dice. So the actions of your
antagonists are determined by the rolls
of your players – to be coarse, if you fail
to hit someone, they hit you. The GM
describes an attack coming at you, and
you roll to dodge it rather than the GM
rolling to hit. People like this for various
reasons, but the two main ones are that
it puts the feeling of power into the
players’ hands (as they get to make all
the rolls) and it’s more efficient (as it
cuts down on the number of dice-rolls in
total). And they’re right – I love most of
the games that do this, which fall into
two sorts. One sort is the narrative-led
games (generally) derived (or inspired)
from Powered By The Apocalypse, and
the others are those trying to streamline
a classical D&D Experience. The former
are trying to simulate how a narrative
feels and the latter are trying to make a
game run more efficiently.
That I avoided this speaks to the game’s
themes. It’s a game where “is this real?”
is embedded in it. If you make the
players “real” in the mechanics in a way
that everyone they meet isn’t, you
already have your answer. The only
difference between the players and
everyone they meet are in-world
abilities, gifted by their dice. There’s
nothing special about players, as
otherwise the story would break. Yes,
there’s an irony – I was led to a more
simulationist mechanic by narrativist
urges.
There’re a few advantages to it – “When
something tries to do something, they
roll something” is a mechanism that’s
easy to explain, but I was aware that by
doing this, I had to streamline
everything else. Hence…
THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM OF MATH
There’re various bits of games theory
I’m aware of, in terms of how people
process information. Manipulation of
abstract numbers is more difficult for
more people than manipulation of
physical objects. DIE is constructed on a
belief that where I can cut math I will cut
math. Instead, we lean on objects, and
the manipulation of objects. There’s a lot
of games which are generally thought of
as simple which involve adding one
statistic to another statistic to get a
number, to either get a target number to
roll or the number of dice you need. Even
that level of math is alienating to some
players, especially as the game gets
later and later (or the players get
drunker and drunker).
Instead, I run off a dice pool which is
based on a single stat. You then add
single dice to it for various advantages.
You don’t count anything on the dice –
you symbol recognise (”If this dice is
higher than 4, then it’s a success”).
When you count the number of
successes you have, you just can use
the dice. Everything is physical.
I have the belief that the longer a pause
in the action where the mechanics
influence the game, the more the mood
of a game breaks. I try to minimise that
as much as I can.
RE-MYSTIFICATION
Of course, with all the other special
rules for all the classes, streamlining
the core mechanic is likely a good idea
too. This game is a monstrous cognitive
load on the GM, due to this design goal.
The aim with the archetypes was to
make them unique, and somewhat
unknown to the other players. You may
know broadly how the other classes
work, but you won’t necessarily know
specifically. Everyone has their custom
mechanics; everyone interacts with
their dice in a different way and so on. “I
am special in a way in which no one else
is” is a fairly common goal in game
design, but I wanted to really push it.
These are also the areas I suspect I’ll
push in the game more in future. I’m
playing around with some advancement
options which are radically different for
each class. I dunno if they’ll work, but
it’s something I want to explore.
FETISHISH OF DICE & D&D
This is kinda obvious, right? Let’s try
and take all those bits of the classical
RPG and just play with it. This includes
things the hobby was demonised for.
Structurally, in many ways, DIE is
playing “Maybe they were right to be
scared?”. Gaming won, so we get to play
with this now.
SIMILAR TO CORE ARNESON/GYGAX
MODEL GAME
There’s lots of excellent indie RPGs
which basically have (rightfully)
understood you can throw a bunch of
stuff out. If you’re starting from a group
who actively knows nothing about RPGs,
these are easy to teach mechanically
(though often hard to play well for
players – players’ ability to improvise is
a skill, one that asks a lot from players).
However, if you’re dealing with a group
of players who have a cultural idea of
how D&D works, that’s a pre-existing
thing you have to work around. There’s
enough D&D stuff in the world now that
a complete lack of knowledge is
relatively rare. They’ve seen piss-takes.
They’ve maybe watched Critical Role.
They have pre-existing expectations of
what a game operates like.
DIE uses those expectations as the
core. This is a fairly classical D&D-esque
game with a bunch of weird stuff added
to it. The core dynamic is the core
dynamic, and DIE’s core system
basically does work like a traditional
game. It’s got weird stuff, but it’s still an
Arneson/Gygax game.
Also, this is my little tribute: did you
know the first Braunstein proto-D&D
games had players all playing
characters sucked into a D&D world?
This is kind of a tribute to that. We’ve
always been doing that.
AN EXPLICIT DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE
TRADITIONS
You go into DIE and it’s a semi-
traditional RPG. In the persona
generation, it’s pure freeform. However,
there’s conversation between those two
forms, but kept slightly at a distance.
There’s a Cartesian thing in DIE,
between the persona and the character,
which I’m interested in exploring.
I am aware that it risks making the game
inelegant. I look forward to someone
hacking this to PBTA.
SOME WEIRD BITS WHICH JUST MUG ME
AS I’M NOT A PROFESSIONAL
Up until a week or so before release I
had something called Hit Dice. There
were two types of Hit Dice, one called
Guard Dice and one called Wound Dice.
They operated identically to Guard and
Health in the current system, but you
manually used dice as the tokens. It’s a
joke about one of the core bits of D&D
terminology – Hit Dice literally being dice
that measure how many hits you have.
In practice, it made the game almost
impossible to play online, required far
more D6 than are in a usual home plus
the players always kept on picking them
up and rolling them and forgetting what
their guard was.
But I persisted with it, long after I
admitted it was a darling I just didn’t
want to kill. A last-minute rewrite
removed it to the system that almost all
the playtesters were using anyway.
Now, this sounds like I learned a lesson,
but that I’m still using Guard and
Wounds as separate concepts shows
that I’m still on my shit. DIE isn’t a
combat game. It’s just that I’ve always
hated systems which have a single hit
point score, and thought I could take an
influence over from Halo and try it out.
This is the work of an enthusiastic
amateur, and sometimes I have to roll
with that.
“FAILING” GRACEFULLY
I use the word failing with reluctance.
I played a lot of games when preparing
for DIE. There’s a lot of influences in
here – there’s a reading list at the back
of the main book of direct influences,
plus a bunch more I was playing to
explore. I learned so much from them.
However, the single biggest influence of
everything I played was looking at how I
felt when a game went badly when
running it. Even when the players liked
what happened, I found myself utterly
distraught that the aesthetic effect
wasn’t what was clearly intended by the
designer (and myself). Games of cosmic
horror ending with laughter. Games of
paranoid backstabbing ending in the
players teaming together. Ugh.
little about looking after the GM. That’s
something I think is damaging and I
wanted DIE to look after you. After all,
you’re likely the only poor fucker who’s
reading this bit of the manual. We heart
you. We heart you hard.
THANK YOU
That’ll do. Honestly, if someone had told
me the joy in seeing people take a
structure you made and watching them
run with it and making it their own, I’d
have done this years ago. Ironically
enough given DIE’s subject, this has
proved to be a gateway to another
world for me.
Thank you.
Kieron Gillen
London

I’ve been pretty lucky in my career. Too

lucky. I’m aware that it’s been a long
time since I failed for a reason that was
entirely my own sorry fault, and so am
out of practice with dealing with
something I felt was an absolute
disaster. As such, those sessions were
emotionally gruelling. Everyone often
enjoyed them, but I was torn up for
weeks.

Key thing: I wanted DIE to be flexible and

to impart to the GM that all results are
good results, and intended. Yes, you
may want one sort of story, but if the
game goes another way, that’s entirely
fine. The game is about listening to what
a group gives you, then building. The
core structure is flexible, going from
entirely quiet emotional beats to loudly
beating the bad guys on the head.

There’s always a lot in games about

looking after the players and making
sure they have fun. There’s relatively