*The following Q&A has been edited for clarity. The exact transcript, as well as Dan's blog can be found here.*
mikev37: my name’s Mike Vorontsov I’ve been designing indie games in my off time for about a decade and a half now, primarily as a hobby, but this latest project is the first time I really dedicated to publishing it to an audience and trying to sell more people on it.
I’ve self-published books before, so some of the experience there crosses over, and I’ve been playing role playing games all my life.The game itself is called Mortal Reins, it’s a table top role playing game system set in an unforgiving world. There’s a few different mechanical aspects I’m eager to talk about with it. It started as a small hack to 5e focusing on the hardcore resting house rule but eventually it got so different that there was very little left of dnd in it, if anything at all. Now it’s got elements from Fate, the Warhammer RPGs, GURPS and Mutants and Mastermind in its DNA. As well as a more fleshed out setting, art, and a slew of its own rules that carry through that “life is a struggle” element. I like to take inspiration from Sapkowski’s quote “this world doesn’t need a hero, it needs a professional”
The game itself is called Mortal Reins, it’s a table top role playing game system set in an unforgiving world. There’s a few different mechanical aspects I’m eager to talk about with it. It started as a small hack to 5e focusing on the hardcore resting house rule but eventually it got so different that there was very little left of dnd in it, if anything at all.
Dan the GMshoe: Thanks, @mikev37! The floor is open to questions! Can you tell us more about the setting?
mikev37: Of course! Whenever I’m thinking of a setting for a game, I want to leave the details somewhat vague for the players to be able to slot in their own story and their own backgrounds, while at the same time giving enough information for common ground and inspiration for all the players. I think something like Warhammer does a very good job of this – there’s large commonalities and themes at play that will impact anyone, but at the same time, the details of any one specific person are basically up to them, even on a larger scale. In Mortal Reins the world is in the midst of a societal collapse, as former empires give away to newcomers, new ideas and otherworldly forces. It’s set in the time right before the dark ages, as people try to hold on to the last vestiges of society. There’s a world map and 7 constructed languages for the players to peruse, or ignore at their leisure, as well as cultures and politics of these large forces.
This is a map of the current setting, zoomed out enough that players can think of the details to their own counties and duchies and warlords.
Doomguy: How does the setting manifest as unforgiving, relative to other systems. You mentioned more difficult rests.
mikev37: In terms of combat, it’s a skill based system, so no character ever gains hit points when they get more experience – there’s some ways to mitigate damage but a crossbow bolt that connects at any level of experience is going to be a very bad day. I hate when characters in games trade blows and the only thing that happens is numbers go down, so I strive to make each action impactful, whether that be parrying, armor flying off, wounds like exposed fractures or heavy bleeding; but at the same time I don’t want to over complicate the player and make them look up many different tables in a book somewhere; so I try to make things like critical charts generic. Then there’s lingering conditions – the majority of death in the pre modern era came from sickness and infection, and if you don’t take care of yourself, that’s something that can happen in Mortal Reins, necessitating your attention. In terms of rest, there’s 3 kinds. A little break gives you just a few hit points and takes an hour; it’s just a stopgap when you’re in a rush. The real rest takes a whole day; and if you’re truly hurt you might be recuperating for three days or more. In addition, if you’re reduced to below 0 body points, you have to heal at the normal rate, which again means a multi day stay at the infirmary
While adventuring you’re likely to either accept jobs that provide you with money or find some treasure or loot you can sell. Whenever you rest you have to spend some amount of cash, that accounts for your living space and food, other expenses – and this amount varies from your standing in society, so a rich person that’s expected to provide for a caravan of servants is going to pay a lot more than someone running around in the dirt and eating chickens they catch; but they’ll have more respect too, and a very slight health bonus (from eating better)
Dan the GMshoe: Are the PCs all human?
mikev37: It’s always easier to remove than to add from a player’s point of view, and I wanted people to be able to play in whatever fiction they like or dream up; so there’s several races, with subspecies of each type as well; your staples like elves, dwarves, ogres, lizard and ratmen… Your race determines your starting array of skills you can choose from, a few different abilities and some slight change in statistics to represent the average of that race (although it’s still possible to go against the grain for a specific character) The main thing that I think is different is the halfling – these are races, not species, right? so each one of them should be able to interbreed, and it’s not just half orcs and half elf humans – why not a half catperson, half lizard or something else really weird? I want the players to use their imagination when it comes to their origin, with the only thing disallowed being races that are half size and races that are large sized creating offspring; the logistics just don’t work. Personally at the moment I can’t imagine myself playing a different system for anything realistic and medieval or fantasy themed, from settings like the game Tyranny to LotR or Game of thrones; so for races I would just remove or slightly alter the mechanics.
Dan the GMshoe: Do you offer any interesting twists on the fantasy standards? What are your elves and dwarves like, for example?
mikev37: I think in terms of twists it’s more like the reverse, an exploration of how these races would deal with realpolitic and the struggles we see in history.So for an elf that lives for a thousand years – what is that like? How do you embody that as a player? How would a society like theirs work? Then there’s the more tongue in cheek references where the joke is that you take them at face value. A thousand and one nights is an inspiration, for example, as a religion spreads through the southern lands. In the story, the emperor takes a new wife every day and only stops when the vizier hands over his daughter (the last noblewoman in the country) Well how would that affect the country?! The noblemen would all hate their ruler wouldn’t they? Why would they obey such obviously insane orders? And what of the girls? They’d be running from the country in droves, or trying to get married quick; and then what about their servants and the rest of society? So that’s somewhat what the races are like – taking a story or a topic and then bending it to it’s logical conclusion. There’s a lot of effort dedicated to making dynamic characters; your characters can’t just be numbers on paper, they must have motivations and connections, something to drive the player when they get lost.
Doomguy: How diverse are the classes, is there multiclassing? Do race and class play into each other much?
mikev37: There’s professions, that offer you different abilities and specialties to take. The more specialized you are in something, the better you are at it. All the staples are there of course, and then some things I haven’t seen much like classes that build magical items. Professions also give you things to do in roleplay – whether it’s covenants to follow or martial traditions to uphold. You can take any skill or specialty at any time, but it requires a justification in the narrative and the GM’s approval, and it’s not as easy as something you’re proficient in. In terms of multi classing – you can do it often, and I think some of the most interesting builds are multi classes – there’s no paladin or paladin like class for example, but it’s easy enough to multiclass a priest and warrior together to make a caster warrior.
Dan the GMshoe: What classes are there?
mikev37: Let me see – from memory there’s Warrior, Barbarian, Runesmith, Ranger, Thief, Bard, Priest, Sorcerer, Warlock, Alchemist, Wizard and Diplomat.The more interesting to me are the less combat focused, Bards, Diplomats, Alchemists; you can play a whole character as a guy (or gal) just getting by, without delving into physical combat. Yes, fights are more dangerous, but that’s why characters have to prepare for them – they’re not necessarily encountering a parade of people just waiting around to get killed. Something that bothered me about ttrps is how they’ll devote 90% of the book to combat and 10% to the social and exploration and everything else: so I made a system where there’s as much focus on non-combat solutions to problems as there is to kicking ass. There’s mechanics around engaging socially and engineering a result you want from a character
AfroSavage: So in terms of scope, you were mentioning earlier that you did not enjoy the scaling hit points and that a bolt is a bolt, it will hurt regardless. Are the players always simply work for hire and getting by? Or is there some way to gain an advantage to address more difficult foes, or overwhelming odds as a campaign progresses?
mikev37: no – you can play at any level, we have a successful test game going on for many months now where the main characters are a queen and her retinue, and the mechanics support that. Of course, she has to be prepared at any time for a red wedding scenario, but that’s part of what the players signed up for in that
SCWhiteford: Since it’s a harsher system, wouldn’t that lead to player deaths often? How does this impact game play?
mikev37: It’s a different way of looking at character death – although your body dies, the work you’ve done is likely going to continue through your friends and comrades. I wanted to focus on character deaths and make a scene out of it; there’s a little tarot in there for seeing what happens to your soul, dependents and estate after death; it’s very similar to retiring a character. Of course there’s ways to avoid death for a time as well, and you get Fate points which are essentially freebies as long as you don’t die too definitively ( your head is removed from your body? Game over man, stop trying to justify why they survived that) and there’s magic so resurrection is a possibility – for a time, until your soul becomes one with the mystical plane surrounding our world.
Dan the GMshoe: What are the differences between the Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard?
mikev37: Magic in Mortal Reins is very freeform – you don’t select from a list of spells, you build your own spells with a points system reminiscent of GURPS or Mutants and Masterminds. (There is a spell list is you don’t want to bother with it, but it’s very much premade spells and they have the details on how they were built so you can alter them) So a Sorcerer is limited to one or two sources of power: Magic, Fire, Water, Air, Nature, Illusion or Mind. They get spells often and can alter their spells often, and they’re good at casting their spells. But – their spells cannot be as complicated as those of a Warlock or a Wizard. Think of them like benders from the last airbender, able to do cool things within their respective mode of influence. A Wizard is the opposite – they can make spells as complex as they like, but they get their spells slower, and to get more spells they need to meet with other wizards, or find spells in catacombs or locked towers. They can make a spell with any magical domain, but they have to practice each domain separately. Although they are the closest to a ‘default’ spellcaster they still get a few tricks up their magic robe sleeves, like making rituals that reduce the arcane cost of the spell Warlocks are a while different beast – their power comes from their pact with a dark power, a concentration of spiritual, magical or otherworldly energy. Like a lot of the book, there’s tons of freedom there to choose or make up your patron, who will impact the game far more than a background character or flavor text and give you specific tasks to complete. As a warlock you have a certain amount of spells active at a time, but you can swap them out to others in the domain of your patron when you rest; in addition Warlock spells are extra unpredictable and dangerous, which means they blow up in your face more often, but are more powerful as a result. Also they can make sacrifices to increase their power.
Beyla: Your art is really cool
mikev37: Thanks! I think art is an integral part of imagination, a picture is a thousand words and all that. So I have art throughout the book and if they’re based on a character someone played in testing a little blurb on their backstory. This particular picture btw is by @JaycenCRose and based on an Assyrian priest I believe. I’ve made some alterations to the colors and an AI pass on certain textures, but it’s their original work.
Beyla: Very cool!
Beyla: “ There’s mechanics around engaging socially and engineering a result you want from a character” can you elaborate on this? I would love to know more as I agree so sad 90% combat and 10% diplomacy
mikev37: So there’s three main actions you can take in game Move Attack Improve your situation (which is really most other things) But attack can be a social attack or a physical one. When you socially attack someone, you’re leveraging your personality and power to get them to do something for you, whether that be getting a better price or betraying their liege lord. The mechanics for it are similar, except for instead of getting your arm chopped off you might have a panic attack or change of heart or be attracted or afraid of someone you weren’t expecting and you can take damage from it – to a point, representing the exhaustion you can feel when denying and stonewalling someone. At the end of the day it’s not mind control, so if you are unreasonable they won’t flip on a dime, just take the damage instead. If you reach 0 mind, you get mind broken and enter a fight or flight state – you can still take actions, but not ones that take significant planning to do. Your opponent can choose 2 of three approaches (fight, flight, freeze) and you choose what your character finally does. In addition to force of charisma and personality, there’s more long term things called strings, which represent things like your attachment to someone or blackmail you have on them that affect how much damage someone takes, like a dagger pointed at their heart might.
mikev37: here’s some more art.
Eric E: What makes this stand out from other Fantasy RPGs out now? Particularly the other big ones (D&D, Pathfinder)
mikev37: 3 things – there’s the mechanics, the theme and the focus. Mechanically, there’s a mix of things I have seen before and things I haven’t. For the basic skill check for example, there’s two dice you roll, choose the lowest, and add your bonus. This makes it a bounded range, so you never feel incompetent, but there’s also advantage points you can gain and lose temporarily so you can manipulate the dice and strike above your weight. There’s a lot this system offers – for example instead of a critical hit on a 20 it can be on any number (the numbers on the dice have to match) and so you can for example, determine where the body part is hit with the # on the die and whether it’s a crit with the other die. At the same time you’re not constantly doing math as you would with an addition system like gurps. Thematically, where Pathfinder and D&D strive for a more superhero power fantasy, what I most care about is verisimilitude. Every mechanic and piece of lore has been seen through the lens of “if flesh and blood mortal beings did this, what would happen to them?” So you can expect betrayals, surprises, limbs getting chopped off, and never ever would you survive a fall from a hundred stories by being angry enough (I see you Dimension 20 ) And this theme goes to all the descriptions, the lore, and the equipment. Outside of the struggle, there’s a lot of customization – I want players to have freedom in their adventures, from what sort of gods are there (even small gods can have influence as long as they push their power into their few followers) to kings and counts, to what magic you have and what your character’s profession is. Every chapter starts with a system of how I built it, so you can build your own, then follows up with lore appropriate builds so you don’t have to.
I try to mix simple and complicated – everything starts simple, and there’s fallback rules for more and more complexity. The core rules are about 30 pages with pictures – That’s all you need to set up scenes, and how you can act in them; every character has access to the same actions, so you know roughly what all your friends can try (from a mechanical point of view; each character is different, but they can all attack, improve situation and move) but in there there’s enough depth that every die roll can lead to a different outcome; you story space isn’t just pass/fail, or degrees of success, but different types of success or failure
Beyla: I may have missed this being asked already … but are there new monsters or creatures you have created ??
mikev37: Yeah! There’s a chapter on making Mounters and Adversaries, and how to survive a murderous party when the action economy is heavily not in your favor, and of course there’s monsters, from common things like trolls to more exotic things like the Gravecrawler ( a sort of muderous catamari made from the anguish of a mass casualty event) and the Qabuuraha, a type of animated guardian for a tomb, and the Nek – an attempt at ressurection that goes horribly wrong and leaves the head of the deceased alive and animated while it’s body becomes monstrous and is no longer under it’s control The reason I focus on more common monsters is because if it’s in a book; it’s not scary. it’s why I don’t like Monster Manuals – I know what’s going on, and that someone’s balanced it. An encounter with a monster isn’t some brigands on a bridge – you shouldn’t know how it ticks. So I have several different types of monsters and guides on how to build your own easily. When I sunk my arrow into a fungally reanimated creature and it just kept moving I wasn’t sure – did I do damage or is something awry here? There’s also titans, monsters so huge that they can almost be their own location at times, a focal point for the story you want to tell. Something the heroes less have to defeat and more have to deal with; you wouldn’t hit a volcano with a sword until it died, so why would you even attempt to do so to a dragon? (all the pages I’m sharing btw are of course work in progress, so forgive if there’s slight errors in formatting and definitely these aren’t final values)
Dan the GMshoe: Do you have a character sheet that we can see?
mikev37: yeah I can share one – like everything else it’s a work in progress of course.
Mortal_Reins_RPG_Character_Sheet_1.pdf. The idea is that your character sheet is like a control board, so 90% of what you need is the first sheet, and you rarely flip it, so that’s where the notes are. Then you can flip the second sheet between your spells and items as needed.
Beyla: The gravecrawler sounds terrifying
mikev37: and it is!
Dan the GMshoe: What is the significance of the skills in bold?
mikev37: sorry misread that as skulls lol. They are the skills your defense stats are built from: Physique – Body points (if you run out you break, you’re gonna die, you might call for your mother and crawl, but not take actions) Stealth – Dodge (how skilled they need to be to hit you if you’re paying attention, dodging and making yourself a smaller target) Reasoning – Consider (like dodge for social situations, but basically how much you can brush off people) Willpower – Mind points (can be used to take physical damage “whew close call” or to refuse a successful social roll against you, or if you’ve run out of arcana and want some magic) Armor reduces the incoming damage, so there’s no getting confused in terms of “did I hit it and it bounced off or did I miss?” in narration. Social Strings can improve your Consider or your attack when convincing someone
Rated Aargh: I only just caught the part about “social attacks.” Is there a fully developed system for social conflict, or is it just abstracted in a couple of rolls?
mikev37: everything is abstracted in a way – so at the end of the day it’s going to be a roll; but it’s not going to be one roll, and might require different approaches
Beyla: What is your favourite part @mikev37?vOr a favourite thing to have created monster NPC setting etc
Lol rapid fire time!!
Let’s go MIKE
mikev37: I should have known the hard hitting questions would start at 10:30. As a creative person, I think my favorite part of the system is the creativity it unlocked in my test players; Two separate people without any of my involvement made a spell calculator, one as an excel spreadsheet and one as a web app; One player immediately sat down and made a hack of it for World of Warcraft; players constantly make up monsters and characters for the fun of it like this guy.
There’s silly things like a magical experiment gone wrong with a pug with an ass on both sides (and presumably one with two puppies walking around elsewhere in the city) and more serious things, dealing with trauma and relationships that I won’t share right this moment. While playing, it’s the ups and downs that I feel. One moment I’m on a horse, blasting cultists left and right; then a monster eats that horse – I take a bad fall – my leg is broken; I can only crawl away and try to survive, and the rest of my friends are screaming for help, but I’m bleeding out on the ground in a ditch; then turning around and making that a staple of my character – I get a metal leg and not regrow the limb not because I can’t afford it, but to show everyone in the kingdom that I am there for them on the front lines while their own lords waste away in castles. Or when a few goons come out and they want my head (different character) for crimes against the Scorbosi empire, but I’m feeling pretty badass and I’m in the rebel province of Ysier, so I laugh at them – except they’re not goons, they’re professional assassins and I haven’t armor on so now I’m barely hanging on with these experts – and I might die any time; you can bet I stopped saving money and immideatly went out and bought some armor (after a lengthy hospital stay)
While on this topic, I wanted to go on record and say that I want to encourage fans and work with them; while I have the company there’s no way we try to force an unagreeable license on the public, because to me it’s about values and spreading this system that I genuinely enjoy the most of anything I’ve played more than money. It’s low hanging fruit right now to be sure, but why do they hang low if not to eat them?
Beyla: Best response ever
Dan the GMshoe: You touched on this earlier, but what is the task resolution mechanic?
mikev37: The general resolution mechanic is you roll two ten sided dice, and choose the lowest, then add your stat, skill or specialty. The more specific you can get the more of a bonus you have, but if you don’t have a specialty you fall back on the skill, and if you don’t have a skill you fall back on the stat. These numbers range from -5 to 20, and the dice have a tendency to roll low, making it a very bounded number. Occasionally it’ll surprise you, but you know what you’re getting into. Both the dice value and the total number matter. To get above and beyond you want to be in a place of advantage – either narratively like having the high ground or by improving your situation, looking at enemy weaknesses, swinging from chandeliers, etc. This gives you advantage points. with those you can – Add 2 to the total number – Re roll either of the dice – Subtract 1 from the dice value Why subtract 1 from the value? Well you get a critical if the dice numbers match, and the dice numbers affect other things about the roll – for example which body part you hit, but there’s others as well. So you can force a critical as long as you’re both prepared and lucky enough, and you can fight things that on paper you have no business beating
Beyla: Buroki… is a nightmare creature … very cool though
mikev37: Here’s an image of the Grave-cradler btw
Beyla: That’s a hard nope! Don’t wanna meet that guy in an alley ever
Dan the GMshoe: Yuck!
Beyla: I like the twerking guy on top. If you got it! Flaunt it! Even when part of a homogenous blob of death.
mikev37: for sure – if you can’t party in death; why live? This particular piece (once again with some adjustments) is by my father, and I think he was inspired partly by renaissance paintings and party by french orgies.
Beyla: Fascinating
mikev37: Here’s another one by my dad, wip text of course.
Beyla: Your dad is cool
mikev37: I love all the artists – but in this I’m forced to agree.
Beyla: Sorry we went overtime. But thank you so much for answering my questions in such clarity and detail.
mikev37: thanks a lot! I enjoyed the questions, even when they started pouring in a bit faster than I could answer them towards the middle there. I blocked off today for it, so it wasn’t a problem, I’m always glad to engage with people. More information can be found on https://www.mythicvisionsgames.com/, but I’m always available to answer questions (when not at work or the three games I’m in at the moment.)
Coming soon to amazon for physical books for as low as they’ll let me for a book of this size and DriveThruRpg as a pdf for probably lower than that.
Beyla: Psssst @Dan the GMshoe
Dan the GMshoe: Thanks so much for joining us, @mikev37! Usual reminder: If you’ve enjoyed this Q&A and would like to treat me to a coffee or two, you can do so at https://www.ko-fi.com/gmshoe. Anything’s appreciated!
For more ttrpg Q&As visit Dan's discord, here.
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