Scribbles and Horrors

At first, forgive some religiosity.

In church they told me that if I took a class after school and went up front during part of the service labelled Communion on the bulletin and kneeled at the altar and took the officiant seriously when they said “This is the body of Jesus Christ, given for you” and “This is the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for you” while giving me a wafer and an ounce of sweet wine, and if ate it thoughtfully, (optionally) saying “amen”, they told me that if I did those things my sins would be forgiven.

Whether or not doing those actions in that order effected the forgiveness of Sin (indeed, whether Sin is tangible danger at all, and not some chimerical non-pumpkin-headed bugbear to make well meaning people terrified by ordinary human behavior and blind to real abuses), whether or not it “worked” to purify my immortal soul, I never failed to be moved by the ritual.

Doing prescribed actions intentionally, in a group, this produced a religious experience. I continued receiving communion long after secularism took over my mind, because it continued to produce a unique experience. I did in fact feel closer to God, or at least I felt what I figured being closer to god might feel like.

I don’t think pen and paper games and religion are the same thing. A good play experience is nothing like a religious one, and I do not believe the two should be mixed together. But, as activities, they share a principle, an exhortation:

Follow the steps and be amazed.

Several times I have attempted to read the Blorb principlesand still only have a vague idea of what it is. Elmcat wrote a helpful post about what it’s not, and Nathan provided a heated Blorb rebuttal.

The discourse has left me feeling like Blorb is too hazy a concept to be particularly fruitful for discussion; everyone can read into it whatever they’d like, and attack/defend whatever version of it they most understand.

In any case I really liked more of Nathan’s post, particularly his emphasis on the game not being real. This forefronts the idea that a game is an activity enacted by people, that what we’re really dealing with is people stuff.

Anyway, this isn’t part of the Blorb discourse but it is inspired by it.

“Throw out the rules, make the game just how you’d like it!” is the long-standing battle cry of the OSR and, while good, when taken seriously it plainly throws out the baby with the bath water.

Rules are important to games, and NOT simply as a tool to manipulate gameplay. What makes rules useful, procedures and preparation, is being locked into them. It’s the act of submitting yourself into the steps.

I wrote, and Weird Writer wrote, that rpg play is like a play rehearsal, the prep and rules are the script to that rehearsal.

But the thing about scripts is for the most part you have to read the words exactly as they appear in it. A script is not a handy inspiration guide for exciting theatre, it is words that you must read.

The trick, the fun of theatre, is finding a way to say the words in a way that is full of life. That’s the sauce, what comes out of being yourself within the game. It’s the combination of self, group, and procedures that make a game.

A bad script can make a good rehearsal. And what makes a script good is not necessarily that it’s easy to perform. For this reason highly polished, “well designed” games catch my interest less often; the frictiony bits that would be surfaces for me to hold onto and push against are burnished out. They slip out of my hands.

Rules and prep should not be tools, and they are mechanisms only metaphorically. Likewise, they should not be improvisational suggestions, flavor text; they are a framework for prescribed action. In willful discipleship to them, rules come alive, and we discover new truths about ourselves.

Follow the steps. Follow them exactly, while being most fully yourself. Push against them while adhering strictly. You will be amazed.

I humbly suggest that this is a principle of Oracular Play.

Angie de Riva, Robot Maker, who partook in JayZer0’s The Realm of Yolmi oneshot and Idraluna’s Superadventure 6, wrote this paper, if you can call it that. It reads more like the ramblings of some Nut, which I suppose is exactly what Dr. de Riva is.

–Scribble M. Horror
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On the Stupidity of the Biological Sciences

Liberated France
D-Day+18

There is no study more pointless and stupid than the study of living beings. What a waste of breath! I have heard people say–really say!–that life is worth investigating because we are living beings, and that therefore by learning about organic bodies we learn about ourselves. As if studying ourselves were some good in itself. Besides, are we not, more fundamentally, made of elements of matter? Would it not be more noble to study Electrical Impulses, Photochemical Processes, Hypodiagetic Materials to further the self-indulgent investigation into beings that we already are?

Anatomy, Botany, Medicine, Sociology, Politics, these are all sciences for children who have nothing better to do than whine. Much consternation has been flit about among the Army recently about the death of a mere rabbit. A RABBIT! So much worthwhile equipment on both sides was lost in the initial hours of the Normandy invasion, and people are sad about bunnies shot up in a field. The world of the past really has gone insane.

Organic bodies are in nearly every way less interesting and useful than mechanical ones. While there is nothing we can do about our own disposition, at the very least we can focus our efforts on building better robots, robots that can accomplish what flesh and blood cannot, what people cannot. Imagine battlefields filled with nothing but machinery! Just think of the efficiency of an automated bureaucracy! No corruption, no wasted energy, only robots, robots, robots.

The United States Army has so far been gracious enough to grant me space and (meager) funds to prosecute my work in France. I know this position is precarious, however. It will dry up at the end of the war. I must secure a more permanent home for my work.

Last weekend I attended my very first gaming con, Dragonflight 46, and had a great time. I hosted 2 games each of Nomic and The Realm of Yolmi, and played in 3: Bunnies and Burrows and some Story Games.

Here are my experiences game by game:

Nomic

I had scheduled 3 4-hour games of Nomic, one each day. Nobody signed up for the Friday one, so when I arrived I cancelled the event to play B&B. This ended up being a good decision, but it was a valuable lesson in not over-committing to just one game.

Just one person signed up for Saturday, which made me somewhat anxious, but I decided to run it anyway. I was able to get an awesome and lovely game going with a “new players wanted” sign. One of the wonderful thing about cons, I’m realizing, are the virtues of just being in a place with a lot of people who play games and have set aside time to play them. The main rule which broke things was the “you must look directly at the Provost while submitting your proposal,” rule, which prevented things from passing. Win by points at a reasonable time, about an hour before the scheduled end.

Sunday had a lot of signups and went smoothly. Doodle contest. Very rules-friendly–managed to convince the gorup of a reading of the rules which made /all/ votes count towards rule-changes, which I’m surprised I got away with. Silver spoon suggestion. Low scoring, win by time pressure.

The final rulesets/gamestates for these games I will add later.

Bunnies and Burrows

I cancelled my first Nomic game in order to play Bunnies and Burrows with Scott Robinson, one of the authors. I haven’t written too much about it, but B&B is a really important game to me. It completely changed the way I understood these games. It was really great to see how Scott ran things; we avoided some hostile sheep, travelled through the forest and got in some hot water with some stoats (was able to use the bite+hold, rip combo to great effect), were unable to communicate with an armadillo and the squirrel who translated seemed to be trying to scam us, hitched a ride into a human market, tried to find the Markrket witch, a human who could speak to rabbits. After some shenanigans we got out of the market, fleeing across a bridge while being shot at by some humans.

There was no hex grid on the larger map, but we were able to navigate it step by step pretty well, with random checks along the way. I felt like the adventure sagged somewhat once we got to the market–as a party we kept trying to hatch schemes that were a little too complicated, at a little too close a resolution.

I think part of this behavior was due to the GM replacing the larger region map with a smaller market one; s players our scope of action changed to one that was slightly more granular (let me go to that stall, there), which made actions like “I try to steal a cabbage” seem insufficient. In any case, the adventure was a success

The Score and Fiasco

During my breaks between scheduled games I wandered into the Story Games Lounge and played two games of The Score and one game of Fiasco. I don’t think I like story games very much. Both of them focused on something like genre emulation, and their approach with prompts were not the sort of thing that I found creatively inspiring to roleplay.

Still, it was fun to hang around a table and my fellow players were excellent, so I had a good time.

The Realm of Yolmi

I ran two sessions of The Realm of Yolmi, Escape From Special Operations Complex #903, which I had run on Discord months earlier. The scenario heavily relies on novelty and surprise (The Realm of Yolmi itself, the Zeta map, the Creatures), and it worked well for both games. All three times I’ve run it, SOC #903 has taken around 90 minutes to complete. This could be modulated by adding water challenges or teleportation traps.

Since I already wrote a detailed session report here, I’ll summarize the differences of each successive group:

The Friday group was 4 strong, and pretty much immediately found themselves on the map. They crawled up a vent straight into some True Ones, who charged through the vent attacking. The party got in a lot of lucky hits, but True Ones are way too fucking strong, so lost 3. Going another way, the group ran into the scientist Polixia Grouse who warily directed the party to a room with quik-rafts in it, however they had to pass through the Galic room. The galics (as on discord) were not unfriendly, but did shake off an arm. The party took rafts up the big passage, and noticed a door which led to the politicians lair. Listening to the politicians and then escaping.

The Saturday group was 8 strong, and only lost 1 character to some (uncharacteristically hostile) Galics. The pattern of progress was almost identical to the Friday group, except they met no True Ones and made an unlikely ally of the grumpy Marshall. It took a little longer for the Saturday group to locate themselves on the map, but they figured it out within 30 minutes.

Something I wish I had done better for The Realm of Yolmi is to take a minute before play to play players through their character sheets. All of the players were great sports about it, but it did happen several times that aspects of the game which i know weren’t ones they knew. In the second game, for instance, people were somewhat confused by descending armor type and misunderstood my pregen sheet ammo notation. It’s very reasonable to be confused by that, and it could have been avoided with a few sentences at the beginning.

One actual regret I have is I spent a lot of time writing Pre-generated characters which I was quite proud of. I had planned to scan all of these before the con and release them on itch, but I didn’t end up having time. As a result, the players took away the original copies. This is a good thing–art is inherently ephemeral, and should be shared–but I do wish I had been able to make time to save my work. I can always make new ones, though.

Overall thoughts

My main aim was to see what cons are all about and share my niche interests. Both succeeded–at least one person each game I hosted expressed interest in investigating Nomic or Yolmi on their own.

It turns out I like cons, or at least, I liked this one. The development of D&D makes a lot more sense, seeing how a community of people-who-play-games can operate. There was just a lot of good energy.

I like structured social interactions. I liked spending all day wandering around a hotel and having a big schedule that told me where to be at particular times. Everyone at the con was friendly, gracious, and more or less eager. Really, excellent.

I will definitely try to make it to more, more Nomic, more Yolmi, and perhaps some other games as well. I’m interested in taking advantage of the con space/time to run more multi-player games I have kicking around; Diplomacy, some hex and counter stuff.

This is a report for a session of Classic Traveller run by Mistuh online on 8/17/2026 via Discord.

RENEGADE SPACE

A group of ruffians got together and decided that they were going to steal a mech suit from House Nrang on the water-world Dactos. The plan was doomed from the start–the kind of disgruntled failed terrorism that is the gentle humming background noise of conquered territories. The banal headline filling a neglected margin in tomorrow’s news: FOUR KILLED WHILE ATTEMPTING TO BREACH SECURE AREA. Who cares?

The co-conspirators were a hodge-podge of under-equipped nobodies, high-class losers who had nothing better to do: Hierodule Gathphystjav (Idraluna), Euth N Aja (Kwall), Ehort (Shy Owl), and Army Major Baron Bargan Numsen (JayZero).

The escapade began after Major Numsen met a beggar (former knight) named PauTen-Ksha who desired his house glory to be restored. Taken with the idea, he assembled the group for Industrial Grass whiskey at his chateau on the coast. Possible ways to retrieve the suit were discussed, including hosting a Grand Ball to attract some Nrang nobility. A survey of the finances showed such a party was out of the question, however.

Instead the party tromped back down to the beggar to question him further. The Hierodule sought to read the fellow’s memories using sorcery, and he responded violently. The scuffle ended with the beggar being apprehended by the authorities and taken off to be executed, however the magician was able to glean from them memory a restraining-equipment ID number: 23462. Find the restraint, and you’ve found the armor.

Off the party went to the registration center, to get info. After waiting in line for many hours, a clerk informed Major Numsen that the location of that object was restricted. Even purchasing a drivers license was unable to get the major the info he sought. With a deftpat on the shoulder, the sorcerer noted the location of the armor: Warehouse 7, site 3

Ehort then scouted out the area of Warehouse 7, and in the course of wandering met some guards, who mainly seemed disaffected and not entirely unfriendly. The next day Ehort invited one guard out for drinks, and after several rounds of black goo the sorcerer was able to again use magic to discover information about the layout of the warehouses, including the location of the Kshatar mobile suit.

The next night the party planned to simply sneak in during a shift-change and use the suit to break out.

Clad all in black, they attempted to jump the fence. Gathphystjav and Numsen made it, but Euth and Ehort fell on their behinds outside the fence, provoking an immediate response from the guards. Exhort attempted to distract the guards, however Major Numsen threw his dagger at one of them, getting a chestful of bullets for him and Gathphystjav in response.

The two outside the fence fled and surrendered. The guard said to Ehort said “Halt! You have been accused of Attempted Trespassing–how do you plead?” to which Ehort said “Guilty!” and was promptly executed. Justice being done, the guard asked the same question of Euth N Aja, who responded “Not Guilty”, explaining a convoluted spy-plot which, though quite well argued, earned him a bullet as well.

The Realm of Yolmi has 8 combat matrices: Land Combat, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Underwater Combat, Ship vs. Ship Combat, Air Combat, Spaceship vs. Spaceship, Spaceship vs. Creature, Spaceship vs. Planet. Besides this, weapons of a sufficiently high tech level skip combat to-hits altogether, automatically hitting unless a saving throw is made.

So the answer to the question “well, do I hit it? What do I roll?” could be on one of 9 tables, depending on what weapons are being used and in what circumstance.

This is typical Realm of Yolmi excess—the breadth of possibility is impressive and awe-inspiring.

Usually, of course, Land Combat is what adventurers will be using. The rest are special cases clearly understandable—naval combat is between ships, phasers are phasers, etc. But Land Combat and Hand-to-Hand combat seem to be weirdly intermingled, and I’m having trouble figuring them out.

Land Combat is a straightforward percentile to-hit vs Armor Type, with modification by weapon, strength, and tactical positioning.

Unless surprised, initiative is rolled individually on d8s with bonuses, and damage is dealt on a hit. Standard stuff.

Firearms are extremely powerful in Land Combat. They automatically jump to the top of the initiative against other opponents and have a 15% chance to kill outright any creature hit. Additionally, a successful hit allows the shooter to “empty the clip”, dealing as successive rounds-worth of damage. Firearms are mitigated by being expensive and rare, and requiring scientists to reload them.

My basic understanding of the combat sequence is this:

1. Determine surprise
2. Determine initiative order
3. Within each combatants turn:
a. Move
b. Resolve to-hits
c. Resolve damage
d. Reload firearms, other actions, etc.

So far so good. But then there’s this whole other section…

The Hand-to-Hand system is described right after Land Combat, and has a similar initiative process, except that non-firearm weapon-wielding characters get +3 initiative. The attacker rolls 1d20 and subtracts 1d8 rolled by the defender, trying to meet a target based on armor type.

It is said elsewhere that Scientists do damage “openhanded”, as do several creatures. The damage calculation in the H-2-H section is appropriately weak (level x STR). Presumably “doing damage openhanded” has something to do with the Hand-to-Hand combat system, right?

But when is this system supposed to be used? It is not simply a hit resolution mechanic which could be swapped into the initiative order, because H-2-H adds +3 to initiative where Land Combat does not. Could it be that initiative is supposed to be rolled each and every combat round? That seems quite cumbersome.

An appendix (containing errata and additions) says that close range (½”) is required for hand-to-hand. Perhaps the initiative order is set at the beginning of combat, but when Hand-to-Hand begins (forced by closing ranks) it triggers a re-assessment of the initiative situation.

A thorough statistical analysis might reveal whether there are advantages to one matrix vs another—I can imagine it being tactically useful to move into hand-to-hand as a way of making it harder to be hit—but I leave that to better calculators than me.

For the most part Yolmi is more coherent and complete than, say, OD&D. But this is one area where things don’t quite seem to fit together. Unfortunately I have not yet made contact with anyone who played Yolmi back in the day, who could answer this question.