Guide to Gaming

The following section is not a component of the rules and could be ignored by any player. However, it may be of great use to those who wish to understand and enjoy the game.

Here, we explain our logic for much of One Sun and give advice based on our understanding and experience playing the game.

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Game Mastering

As the Game Master, you are the player with both the greatest power and greatest responsibility. Unlike the other players that have creative and active control over only a single character each, you have near absolute control over an entire world. It is your responsibility to play every character, narrate every scene and track every consequence. In fact, the only thing you don’t have power over or responsibility for is the characters of the other players.

This might seem overwhelming at first cognitive glance, but isn’t nearly as challenging as it appears. The first thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to know everything. Yes, you are responsible for narrating everything about en entire world, but you won’t end up having to narrate almost all if it. In fact, shockingly little needs to be defined before the players get to it, and ideally most things should not be.

If one of your players asks something unexpected, like what is the floor made of, simply make up something vaguely appropriate on the spot. What is the floor made of? It’s wood. Or maybe stone. If you are in the mansion of an insane mage, maybe it’s thousands of unicorn shaped cookies.

As long as you can logically justify the answer, it doesn’t really matter what you say. You should already vaguely know what things are relevant, something that requires little detail, and everything else can either be random or extrapolated from the things that are relevant.

That isn’t to say there will never be consequences for your answer. The floors are made of wood? Well, that means they can light the floor on fire. Why would they do that? No, I’m curious. I don’t know why they would do that. However, for some reason or another, they probably will.

This sort of deviation from the so called plot will always happen, unless you are completely smothering their personal agency. In actuality, this is a good thing. The game is mostly your story, but it’s also partially the other players story.

They will make their own decisions and change the world around them because of it. If you don’t want them to do this, we recommend taking control of all the player’s characters and narrating the rest of the campaign while the players sit back and listen. This is something called story telling and is a great pass time for both the narrator and listeners. However, it isn’t a role playing game.

What makes role playing games different is that they are collaborative story telling. Even if the Game Master has most of the control, you will have to accept that the players are also narrators in control of a small subset of the story.

This is possibly the biggest responsibility of the Game Master, to have nearly infinite power and still allow the agents of chaos in your creation to have their autonomy.

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Building a Campaign

The first thing when planning a campaign is to determine if your players are existentialists or essentialists. To put it in more common terms, an existentialist believes that the world has no purpose in itself and that they must create purpose for themselves. Conversely, an essentialist believes that the world has a purpose for them and they just have to find it.

This might seem like a rather odd and abstract place to start, but it will tell you what sort of campaign your players will most invest in and enjoy. If you aren’t confident which group each of your players falls into, you can just ask them. It will likely help a lot to explain the idea of both groups to them first, but you will probably get a grasp on their stance from what they say, even if they aren’t sure themselves. Once you know, you can build a campaign around the result.

The contents of this campaign are usually the easiest part to create. This is because you will almost certainly already have a world and plot you want to use or can simply steal one.

If you have one, than all you have to do is work out how to get your players into it and use one of the three campaign styles to guide them through it. If you have already come up with a world and plot, you are pretty much set to go.

If you are suffering from creative disfunction, but still want to run a campaign, that is not actually a problem. You can do what lots of people who cannot get their creativity up do, use someone else’s creativity.

Simply find a book, movie, video game or even myth or fairytale and use the plot and potentially world from that. Like any good story, if you tell it well people will enjoy it regardless of whether you came up with it.

Not only does this let you have a tried and tested world and plot, but it can provide a new way to experience a story you already love and possibly make your own changes to it.

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Existentialist’s Campaign

An existentialist’s campaign should have far less emphasis on the plot and a lot more on the world as a whole. The players won’t engage or enjoy themselves if they don’t have autonomy and will see world events as opportunities for them to react to as they see fit. Attempts to force them into predetermined actions will only remove their interest in the game. Instead, you should have significant situations happen around and to them, and then let the world change according to how they react.

You must not plan to far ahead, since they need to be allowed to behave freely. This can be problematic for a classical plot, but is easily fixed by converting the plot into goals and events. For the goals, simply make sure there is something that all the players want, such as taking over a kingdom, stopping their planet from being swallowed by a cosmic monstrosity from beyond the stars or ensuring that their favorite take out restaurant doesn’t close down, then arrange events so that each player knows and cares about the goal. If they don’t actually care, either try something else that will make them care or try a different goal. As for events, those are simply the things that will take place around them if they don’t interfere, or take place because of their previous interference.

This can also be tricky because some goals will be achieved much faster than you expected, or sometimes significantly slower, but this just means that you get to provide new goals. Not only that, but you can also use the events caused by the players’ previous actions. Existentialist players love to see the effects they caused, good or bad. It works as an excellent way to make the world feel more real and the players more a part of it.

A major advantage of existentialist players is that they will, in addition to reacting to your provided goals, generate their own goals. This may be hard to deal with, since they will value your goals less than their own, but it is helpful because you will only have to react accordingly. In fact, player goals tend to work far better than Game Master provided ones.

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Essentialist’s Campaign

An essentialist’s campaign is the exact opposite of an existentialist’s campaign. You will want to focus heavily on the plot and use the world as only a place for the plot to happen in. The players will need to always feel like they are being lead by the plot, even when they don’t understand what the plot is.

This can actually be easier, since you only need one real path. In fact, the hardest part is often just how blunt you have to be. They will be trying to constantly move forwards, but tend to lack the ability to figure out which way that is.

The best solution is typically to make the end goal overwhelmingly obvious and put a clear and direct sign telling them where the next step is at the end on the step they just finished. It is best to think of your players as if they were playing a classic video game. The are told by the information dumping character what to do, they do it, then the next information dumping character tells them what to do next.

This can seem exasperating, but it is usually necessary. Unlike existentialists, who don’t really need external direction, essentialists will quickly flounder, freeze up and finally disengage if left without direction. Even if a plot exists, you cannot let them loose it for long.

An unpleasant, but often effective, way to keep them on track is to make everything that isn’t the plot so boring and undetailed that they cannot mistake it for relevant. For a lot of Game Masters, this solution will be rather miserable. After all, many Game Masters love making worlds and having them explored, hence why they are Game Masters. If this is the case and you find simplifying your world necessary, it might be best for your own enjoyment not to play with essentialists. If you don’t mind, than removing unnecessary detail can help enormously in directing the players.

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Mixed Campaign

The last and hardest group to Game Master for is a mixture of existentialists and essentialists. In this situation, you will have to provide meaningful aspects of both campaign styles. For the essentialists, you will have to provide a clear and obvious plot, but you cannot trap the existentialists in that plot.

Odds are this will be a tricky balance, but it can work perfectly fine. In the end, it is mostly a social issue. Both groups will have to be aware, even if subconsciously, that the other group gets a portion of the game.

You can reduce the strain from this by tricking each group into feeling like the campaign is what they want, which can be difficult but effective. One way to do this is to make the campaign an existentialist’s campaign, but arrange events that provide the impression of a plot. How stable this plot is can vary, but the important part is that the essentialists can follow it.

This might be hard, since the existentialists will have to be given a degree of free reign, but the essentialists will have to work around the existentialists actions.

In this situation, you will actually be using the logic of an existentialist’s campaign, but making the events look like a plot to the essentialists.

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Non-Player Creatures

In most campaigns, the Game Master will need to create and control numerous creatures, some of which will be sapient characters like the player’s characters.

From a mechanical point of view, all of these creatures are identical to a player’s character. A forest wolf may consist of a clan with Martial Artist, Speedy and a couple appropriate Features for detail. In the same manner, an average villager might have a few versions of Skilled based on their profession.

While most creatures in an average world are assumed to be far bellow level one, having only a couple FP at most, creatures that are meant to challenge or rival the player’s characters should have approximately equivalent FP to the players.

For the purposes of combat between players and non-players, the non-players should have slightly fewer FP in total than the players. The exact ratio will vary by situation and should mostly be left up to Game Master discretion.

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Genre

While the clans in the Bestiary are nebulously high fantasy themed, it is rather easy to create new clans or flavor the existing clans to work for various genres. The main situation where most clans will not work is if the campaign is low fantasy or low sci-fi. In this case, clans will probably consist of Features that can logically be trained by an ordinary human and the Game Master may want to reduce the amount of FP gained at each level.

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Leveling

The base One Sun system works under the assumption that the Game Master will provide the players with new levels when they achieve something of relevance, what is often called milestone leveling.

Of course, since levels are only a quicker way of organizing a character’s total FP, with first level providing twelve and every level thereafter providing six, it is relatively easy to do away with levels entirely. It is a perfectly valid option to give FP in smaller quantities more often, potentially giving one or two FP at a time. This will be harder to track, but can provide a steadier feeling to the players’ characters’ progression.

It is also an option to provide FP based on the power of creatures killed by the players. This can be done in a mathematical way by giving the players a percentage of the FP of creatures they defeat. Naturally, this method isn’t perfect. One of its major problems is that not all Features aid in combat. The FP cost of Features is based on how generally useful the Feature is, not just how much it helps you make things dead.

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Immortality

One of the least traditional Features in the system is the various forms of the Immortality Feature. Most people, we believe mistakenly, assume that being incapable of dying is an overpowering advantage. We have found this to not be remotely true.

Features are priced based on how much of an advantage they give a player, mainly how much the Feature aids in overcoming a situation or achieving a goal.

Immortality is a very powerful Feature, but it doesn’t let the player overcome every challenge or achieve any goal automatically. The only thing Immortality insures is that the player’s character doesn’t ever permanently die, which doesn’t make them invincible. Of course, neither does Invincibility.

Since a character has to be at least third level or take Weakness Features to have Immortality, other characters at the same level could have powerful offensive abilities, while a character with Immortality will only be able to not die.

Since Immortality Features are not meant to allow for immediate return from the dead, a character with Immortality will still be defeated or inconvenienced when they would be killed. When reworked, new Immortality Features should be increased in cost if the way they return the character from the dead is faster than those in the Bestiary. Otherwise, they can be kept at about the same price.

If the Game Master is running a campaign where the only real goal is to not die, than Immortality should either be banned or increased in cost. Otherwise, it rarely becomes a problem.

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Magic

The various versions of the Magic Feature, such as Magic or Reality Warper, can be hard to balance, since they are left up to the Game Master to quantify. This is not truly a new idea.

In fact, Game Masters already set the DC for all sorts of things. Any character could make a roll to attempt something challenging, such as lighting a fire in the rain. The only difference with a character with Magic is they can attempt things that would otherwise be impossible.

Of course, this doesn’t mean a character with magic will achieve the impossible. The exact difficulty of Caster Checks is left up to the Game Master, but it should generally justify the FP cost of the Feature.

A vague rule of thumb is that an average character, meaning one with a Smart Ass of 3, with an average roll, meaning a roll of 6, should be able to succeed at minor things like creating a floating light or lighting a fire as an action. Likewise, a similar Check should be able to achieve greater works, such as healing a broken arm or divining the location of a lost object or creature, if given a couple days to work at it.

Features like Minor Magic or Vital Mage are still functionally Magic Features and should be given the same difficulty. Of course, they are much cheaper, since they have a limitation on their usage.

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Weakness Features

Weakness Features are Features with negative FP costs, meaning that they return FP to the creature. This allows characters at lower levels to have powerful and interesting abilities that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

In addition, Weakness Features also encourage players to work with and around innate flaws to their characters. In many cases, a flaw can be even more entertaining than an ability, giving entertainment for the players and opportunities for the Game Master to complicate the character’s life.

Naturally, not any Weakness Feature works for every character. For example, the Byslexia Weakness shouldn’t be allowed in a campaign where reading and writing does not exist. That is not to say a player cannot find ways around their Weaknesses, but all Weaknesses must be a meaningful problem to deal with.

In the example of the Byslexia Weakness, a character could in game acquire a genetically enhanced parrot to read to them, but couldn’t take a second Weakness that renders them blind in addition to dyslexic. Since not being able to see makes not being able to easily read meaningless, the characters would not get FP back for Byslexia.

Of course, characters can use FP to pay back the cost of Weakness Features. This lets characters overcome their Weaknesses, ideally for a narrative reason. There are certain Weaknesses that cannot be directly removed, since they are directly connected to other Features.

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Transmittable Clans

There are numerous Features that allow a character to give other creatures Features in one form or another. In the Bestiary, all examples of this type of Feature only give Features that the creature has sufficient FP available to buy. This is mostly a precaution to ensure players do not use such Features to give each other more Features than their level would allow.

Unfortunately, that exact form of power acquisition can be incredibly satisfying for the players. For example, a party might convince or trick a powerful vampire into turning them into vampires, the vampire using their appropriate Feature to give the players all base Features of the Vampire clan. This could be a satisfying accomplishment for the players, which preventing just because it would give more power would be completely counter to the point of the game.

There are a couple solutions. First, the Game Master can simply raise the players’ levels to provide enough FP to buy the new Features. If the players had to work to gain the new Features, it is likely appropriate to give them levels.

The other option is to have all transmittable clans have a total FP cost of zero. If the clans are made with Weaknesses to equal out the Features, the players will still have exciting and narratively appropriate new Features, but the overall power of the players should not meaningfully change.

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Custom Features

Although there are numerous clans in the Bestiary, the idea of the One Sun system is for players and Game Masters to be able to easily make unique clans specific to their game.

That is not to say it is required to customize everything, or even anything. We know that many people lack the time or inclination to create new content for a campaign. Due to this, the Bestiary gives easy and quick pre-made clans that can be used without significant time or energy investment. After all, the main point of the system is to be easy to use.

However, our hope is that players and Game Masters will work together to create new Features that have about the same value as existing Features. This lets players feel more invested in their characters and the world around those characters, making them engage with the narrative.

With some thought, making customized Features is actually quite easy. It is simply a matter of considering how much effect the Feature has over a characters ability to overcome obstacles and how easily it is exploitable. This will give a vague feeling of how strong the Feature is.

Once that is determined, simply compare the strength of the Feature to other Features. This does not require compared Features to be similar, although it can help if they are. If no similar Features exist, you can consider how much you would value the advantage the custom Feature gives and compare it to how much you would value existing Features. This should give you an idea of what the custom Feature should cost.

In the end, even if you screw up the cost, you can figure this out in game play and adjust its cost once the character levels up. Players should know that this could happen, but Game Masters should only use it if they think the Feature is really causing a problem.

Unlike many seem to believe, balancing is pretty irrelevant to game play. It is really just a way to keep other players from complaining, although those who will complain because of balance will probably complain anyway. Overpowered Features are only really a problem if they mechanically damage the campaign, making it hard to handle the mechanics and still have satisfying game play. If they aren’t causing such problems, than the issue is fundamentally social and won’t be fixed by changing mechanics.

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Zero FP Features

There are numerous Features that do not cost FP to take. These Features are, in essence, flavor given mechanical definition. In many campaigns, such Features wouldn’t even be given defined mechanics, simply left up to Game Master discretion.

However, mechanics mainly exist to give solidity to the world, providing the feeling that things have rules and are therefore more real. This has nothing to do with a character’s power, but simply how they exist within the world.

It is not necessary to define everything like this as a Feature, but we have found that a lot of Game Masters will fall into the problematic belief that things that are not mechanically defined do not exist. This is such a problematic situation, that shows up to often, that we decided it was easier to simply have Features that do not effect balancing still be defined as Features.

An example of such a Feature is Timeless. Not aging is something that a character might very much desire, possibly dedicating their entire life to acquiring. However, it has no actual effect on the character’s effectiveness and does not affect balance. Even if a Game Master does not want a player to start with Timeless, such as in campaign where a primary objective is to gain biological immortality, they should not change the cost for the Feature, simply require narrative accomplishment to acquire it.

In fact, charging FP for Features that exist for flavor is, in our experience, one of the most systemically destructive things a Game Master can do. Charging for flavor Features pressures players to only choose mechanically useful Features in order to remain useful in the campaign. This prevents creativity, disengaging the players from the narrative process.

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Realms, Realities and The Beyond

The terms realm, reality and the Beyond are all used throughout the Bestiary to refer to components of the cosmology that many clans are built around. Of course, the cosmology of any given campaign is up to the Game Master.

However, some amount of cosmology helps to explain the ideas of certain clans, making them reliant on something at least similar to the cosmology of realms, realities and the Beyond.

A realm simply refers to another world that is spatially separate from other realms. An example of this could be anything from the afterlife to a parallel universe. Depending on the Game Master, realms might be trivially easy to move between or nearly impossible.

A reality is just the sum of all realms within the reality. This might mean a single realm, several realms or an infinite number of realms. In most campaigns, a reality will be the entirety of all things that could possibly be experienced. Moving between realities is impossible for anything that exists, since no other reality exists from the perspective of any given reality.

Beyond is by far the strangest term, and hardest to deal with. It is thought of by those who know of it, but don’t even start to understand it, as the place outside the realities. This is a metaphor that, while easy to understand, is completely wrong.

The Beyond is not a place, it is a non-place. You can no more go, or even be, there than you can go into your own shadow. It is non-reality, the shadow of all realities. Within it there is no space, no time and no it to be within.

Despite this, it contains everything that has ever existed, ever will exist or ever could exist, none of which does. Amongst all of this are the Children Of Perdition, those that do not exist and could exist in any reality because of it. They cannot die, for they do not live. They cannot be destroyed, for they do not exist.