Scribbles and Horrors

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.

Here is my entry to the Appendix N Jam 2026. I’m pretty happy with it!

Map: MEW_Map.jpg
Key: MEW_Key.jpg or MEW_Key.pdf

So have I heard and do in part believe it. —Horatio, Hamlet

Here is Level ETA, The Tomb of Krathyguiar’lkjjin Mirethought, housing the remains and treasures the deified ruler whose reign was so ancient and influential that it is used as a point of comparison to the weeping heart of the underworld. (ETA is only the tomb of Mirethought–a monument placed relatively near the surface. What remains of his former domain is still deeper and more unspeakably vast.)

Location Within Redux

Obviously there are exits North and South to maps which haven’t been drawn yet, but Upwards is The Palace of the Snail Men. You can spot the spiral ramps coming down if you look closely.

Dangers

There are no opportunistic monsters in the tomb; no creature dares enter, save to pass through. It is all finely polished stone, statues and stellai, polished vessels, various thrones. The main danger is becoming snuffed out by the immensity of the place; getting lost, suffocating, starving, etc.

Smells

• Death
• Heavy musty perfume
• Blood
• Halitosis
• Spring flowers

Sounds

• The quiet of peaceful meditation
• The silence after a murder is over
• The apprehensive silence before standing up to someone in power
• The soundlessness of trying to sneak up on an animal
• The silence after giving up on sex
• The silence of paralyzing fear
• (muffled, far away) The edge of a distant sob

Treasure

There are Great Treasures in the tomb–17 for the King, 17 for the Queen–objects of unimaginable power. They are each placed in their own chamber, lining the north edge of the map.

I don’t have any of these worked out yet, but they’re the sort of objects where touching them turns you into a god or teleports you to mars or fills your insides with maggots or allows you for force any man into servitude for ten generations.

You know, the sorts of things that no reasonable person would ever want, and thus which are highly coveted.

Layout

This is the densest map of its type I’ve ever drawn. For the most part I’m pleased with it for what it is. It is much more difficult to navigate than my usual stuff. Unlike my previous maps, dead-reckoning can only get you so far.

I challenge you you trace a path from the big spiraling passage to one of the treasure rooms at the top. It is possible, I promise!

By my count there are 1,254 rooms, so probably close to 300 points of interest.

More than other levels, ETA will rely on something like setting-writing on my part, and will of necessity need lots of maps/hints/instructions for navigating. It’s a place with a strong story, which is somewhat unusual for me.

A 16-page printable pdf of the map is here, which is how I will use it at the table in actual play.

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Redux will be on hold for a while after Monday. I’ve become burnt out, and need to take time away from these games to clear my head. Forget some things, so that I can approach them afresh later. This always happens, where suddenly I can’t stand RPG stuff. I will come back. That always happens, too.

Dear reader, I am not someone who believes the be all end all of tabletop games is player agency. I subscribe to a different idea, that games are social and material processes which are fruitful in themselves; the mere application of rules to a gamestate–even when that application is choiceless and tedious–is worthwhile to me. Monopoly is good, actually.

However, I found myself making an argument about player agency and I’d like to explore it here. For the sake of this post, then, I will take up the position that agency is King: the point of making and playing games is for players to be able to make cool moves. Say this is true.

I argue that, sometimes, character creation reduces player agency. Decision-paralysis and the pressure to make “good” character creation choices can reduce players’ abilities to make cool moves in play at the table.

The argument isn’t very complicated, just that energy and inspiration are components to agency—finite resources—and that choosing to expend them while in the adventure rather than before can be a better idea.

“How can I make this photographer that my Ref handed me useful in this fight against a bugbear?!” is a more interesting and fruitful choice (a cooler move, more agency) than “Should I put my skill points into Tact or Righteousness?”

You could say that allowing the player to choose the photographer in the first place gives them two cool moves instead of the one, and thus that character creation still increases agency. This might be so if we had unlimited time and unending energy, but I think the effort necessary to choose a photographer lessens the coolness of the photographer’s bugbear actions. It feels less efficient to me.

Besides, if that were the case, then we could increase agency infinitely by letting players choose what classes are available, what rules to use, and so on. This would be fun, but in the infinite series of increasing agency the game sort of disappears.

My basic claim is just that often “here’s the situation, make do with the pieces you have to achieve some desired outcome” can indeed enable agency in a way “here are building blocks, assemble them so that you can be prepared for some situations, and then we will have you go into some situations” does not.

Now this is a focus thing, right, like if you’re playing The Character Creation Game, where the goal is to build the best character, obviously eschewing character creation only reduces agency. In the games I generally play the focus is on what one does with the character, so prioritizing player time for doing is what will increase agency.

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Again, though, my real thoughts are that agency isn’t really the most important part of these games, that process is. From a process perspective, character creation is great.

Here’s an adventure I wrote for my Extremely Byzantine 5-room Dungeon Jam

Adventure PDF: gggg.pdf
PNG of Map: gggg_map.png