Listen to the Rain

Back in the 80s and 90s, there was an explosion of RPGs and in order to distinguish themselves from Dungeons and Dragons, a lot of them came up with their own words for various common gaming terms. White Wolf games had "Storyteller" instead of "Dungeon Master" (or the older "referee") and "Chronicle" instead of "Campaign," for example. Immortal: the Invisible War is famously impenetrable, with terminology like:

"Beheading: The only reliable way to kill an immortal. It works by separating the connection between the brain and vox. When you behead an immortal, their immaculum spills out, the himsati is let loose, and the himsati soul either goes to the “Blue Air” as a “Gossamer” or remains in the living world to try to absorb immaculum and reform itself."

I can't complain, I love Polaris, the RPG where all game terms are ritualized phrases you recite to the other players to accomplish actions, like saying "But you ask far too much!" when you're bidding on stakes and want to turn down the offer.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I just backed a new RPG from Onyx Path called The World Below, a game with elements of both exploration and settlement-buildign but, more important to me, a pre-made example of my holy RPG grail, a d10 dice pool-based classic fantasy RPG. And it has some excellent examples of 90s-type RPG terms. Let's go through them in alphabetical order.

• Ancestry: One's species background, but also one's cultural background, with no real distinction. As the game says:

  An ancestry isn’t always biological. Sharing cultural ancestry is more significant in the World Below than genetic ancestry, due to the sheer number of children who lose their parents in monstrous attacks or environmental disasters, or simply because one day they ventured too far out into the Dark and never returned.

  though this really doesn't square with the actual Ancestries in offer. There's your classic humans, elves, dwarves, and goblins (humans, elvkin, darvs, and hobgobs) but there's also entissia, cold-blooded egg-laying reptiles, or makiru, who are born as rats and become more humanoid as they grow to adulthood. And sure, an elf raised from infancy by lizard people is going to have much more in common with lizard people culturally, but they'll never be cold-blooded. Ancestry determines your Momentum Generators.


• Bonds: Relationships that tie the characters together.


• Calling: Basically class or profession, it gives you access to Sorceries. Things like Alchemist, Farsighter (people who live in the wild), Silhouette (thieves), etc. Calling determines your Theses.


• Community and Settlement: A character's home. Settlements have a fixed location, communities are on the move. Examples include the Zilenz, a group of nomads who are trying to develop a comprehensive map of the World Below; Agosby, a town build using bridges and vines over a giant chasm; Oracaster, the deepest known town, built near magma flows; or Chlzyl, people who lived in the World Below before the cataclysm destroyed the surface (primarily subterranean elves and morlocks in the past, now made up of all kinds of people). The ones who hated the exodus all went deeper to who knows where, so the ones who stayed are friendlier. Community and Settlement determines your starting skills.


• Dawn: A combination of Ancestry, Community/Settlement, Dogma, and Guild.


• Dialectic: Now here's some quality nonsense. A character's dialectic is their supernatural attunement to something--Adamas are attuned to gemstones, Scarabs are attuned to insects, Qeobacca are attuned to Kaos (q.v.), Myceli are attuned to mushrooms. Here dialectic is used to in the Hegelian sense, where two opposing truths are reconciled--world above and world below, human and gemstone, or whatever. Dialectic determines your Syntheses.


• Dogma: Religious belief, faith, or personal drive. It says a Dogma does not have to be religious but the examples listed are mostly religious beliefs. The exception is the Hades Tract, who believe that everyone died in the cataclysm that drove people underground and they're actually in a purgatorial afterlife. There's also the Lords and Ladies of Rot, who believe that the monsters who live underground are the rightful inhabitants and they should be allowed to rule as they like.


• Guild: Large-scale organizations that united multiple peoples and settlements. The Union of Cartographers and Stratigraphers makes maps, the Company of Artificers create things, the Excavators and Explorers Collective dig new tunnels between settlements or mines to raw materials, the the Kitchen makes food safe, and the Moths are a mercantile consortium. The Guilds dislike Communities as small organizations outside of their control. Guilds determine your starting Attributes.


• Kalm: The time of year when Kaos rises up, causing monsters to attack settlements and magic to go wild. Characters hole up in a stronghold, train, recover, and wait for the Kalm to die down. Suggested to be named due to reckless adventurers all going home to their families during the season.


• Kaos: The wild magic of the World Below. Kaos flows from the Well at the deepest known point, which is guarded by the Well Liches, and thus gets stronger deeper down.


• Sorceries: Supernatural powers derived from your Calling. Example include Mend the Flesh (Holy, heal nearby targets), Call Animal (Farsighter, summon animals to help you), Floral Fortress (Farsighter, build a flowering structure to hide in), or Perception Feedback (Kaosist, lash back on anyone scrying on you). Sorceries are also divided into Wisdoms, so a character will be better with one Wisdom than with others.


• Syntheses: Supernatural powers derived from your Dialectic. Examples include Breakaway Weapon (Adamas, grab a bit of rock as a single-use weapon), Detachable Limb (Myceli or Scarab, escape danger by taking damage), Foul Omen (Qeobacca, inflict bad luck on an enemy or friend), or Light Eater (Plutonic, literally eat local light sources for sustenance). These are balanced to be used one per session.


• Tether: To channel raw Kaos and try to create some effect. This is dangerous and unpredictable, but might be exactly what you need in a desperate moment.


• Theses: What in other games would be called Advantages/Perks/Merits. These are things like Armor Expert or Darksight or Keen Sense or Quick Reflexes.

I love this kind of thing.

I'm not sure I'd ever run the given setting, though I do like the mechanics for go on adventure, come back and defend your settlement. It could work very well for any kind of exploration in a dangerous area game, like post-apocalypse, exploring a new continent, or what have you. But I'm like 99% sure when I do I'm just going to call these things Class, Powers, Spells, and Merits, the same way there are great names out there for people who run games like "Absolute Judge" or "Hollyhock God" but the majority of people just say Game Master.