Der PigDog's PigBlog

CW necrophilia Here's the playlist I made and have been listening to as I prep the game: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ih9SFciZe1a38sHqXWDsP?si=d7552f0144114e5f Played with my partner Misha, our friend Divya, Divya's boyfriend Ken, and our friend Evann. Misha has played a little bit of wargamey DND with me, Misha and Divya have played in the last session of Monsterhearts, and Ken played one session of some kind of DND before. Otherwise, no RPG experience. We spent a really long time -- maybe too long? -- talking about the nature of play, how it works, what the skins do. Ken and Divya (werewolf and ghost, respectively) chose their skins eagerly. Misha was happy with infernal, and Evann eventually settled on fae. The game is set in  Hudson, Ohio, where Ken grew up. 20k residents. Majority white. Educated, middle class or higher. Headquarters of Jo-Ann Fabrics. He did not like it there, and does not want to go back. The seating chart is still a great method of scenario prep.

In essence this is just classic dice pool tech applied to a new topic, morale. I work-shopped these rules with Eero. Used them in play just once, but it was hella successful, so I thought I'd share. First, determine the base morale of the unit, usually a number between 1/6 and 5/6. 3/6 is the default for trained combatants. 1/6 is a pack of cowards or totally untrained combatants. 5/6 is zealous. If you need to go higher than 5/6, you can, you'll just use bigger dice for the pool (see below), and a number like 7/8, 9/10, etc. In a basic combat situation, you roll 1d6 (or a bigger die for super zealous fighters) and try to get less than or equal to the morale score. If the check fails, the unit won't advance or attack, though they will defend themselves. Now let's get fancy. Make a pool of bonus or penalty dice for every advantage or disadvantage, respectively, the unit has at the start of the fight. Bonus and penalty dice cancel out. Advantages are things like "out