Songs of Misery
[This post was originally on Substack. Now it's here!]
This ttrpg is weird, specific, and it’s my love letter to a game of villainy and horror. Players play as archetypal “death knights”, reanimated servitors of a Big Bad Evil Guy. The game diverges in that, spontaneously, the PCs have all become possessed of their free will and collectively slain the Evil that made them.
Now, possessed of great power and magic, their free minds must
grapple with the horrors they’ve been made to do, finding themselves in a
world they helped to ruin.
A human brain piloting a petrified killing-machine is ill equipped for the horrors that follow it, like flies to a carcass!
In other words, it’s not quite horror - horror is best defined as having a lack of choices, and this game is something of a power fantasy intertwined with a sudden end to horror and ensuing dread - and a psychological horror, thriller and anti-horror (what’s that even mean?) all wrapped up into one gestalt mess.
Thus, we have The Songs of Misery. This idea is inspired-by and corrupted-from from Joshy McCroo’s Rise Up Comus blog, wherein he crafts an optional magic system for Lord of the Rings Roleplay.
Considering I am also tapping into a similar well of literary inspiration, I thought it’d be perfect to imagine what kind of wailing, craven songs a wraith might sing in pursuit of fleeing heroes!
How Anguish Fits In
PCs recover from wounds very quickly, and have a total of 20 points of Stress they can acquire before things start going really south. The game loop of YADN involves withstanding grievous physical wounds - stabbed, caught on fire, head cut off and re-attached - and acquiring Stress over time from said activities. Through diurnal rests in (ideally) darkened catacombs, characters recover Stress.
What they can’t recover (at least overnight) is the resource called Anguish.
Anguish is a kind of “trauma resource”, an ascending numerical count of how much morbs, morose and dismal energy clouds a character’s mind. Last time I shared that Anguish primarily comes about through Brooding - a rest activity that lets a character push their luck, further reducing their Stress at the cost of ticking up some Anguish.
That’s still true, but recently I’ve been playing with Anguish also being a result of exposure to dark magicks. Activites like pushing a Relic (sic. magic item~) beyond its use or singing a Song of Misery can tick up your Anguish.
I think a game primarily involving undead characters means they are more powerful than characters of the average ttrpg, but they also have unique drawbacks. Exposure to powerful sorceries strains to undead body’s ability to manage its living, human brain, “rattling the cage” and raising the chance that a character spirals when they are Ruined or Burnt-Out.
Mechanics
Singing a song Tests a character’s Dread, the stat involved in sorcery as well as resisting the final step into the grave (Torment).
The character can always sing a song. I hate moments in games where a character gets to do something really cool, they fail a single check, and that moment is snatched away from them. Good game design can circumvent those bad feels.
The test here, then, is not pass/fail but to determine the severity of its cost.
Pass the song test and you pay a Stress
cost. It’s bad to acquire too much stress, but there is wiggle room and
the player gets to choose if a song’s effect is worth the risk.
Failing the song test replaces the cost with Anguish. Anguish doesn’t immediately do anything; there is less of a direct consequence, since it’s outside of the constant resource tug-of-war between wounds→stress→torment. Buildup of Anguish is worse because it does not go away on a long(ish) rest, you have to cart your dead ass back home to your fortress of evil to clear it. The more Anguish a character has, the greater their chances of acquiring a Condition (and the more severe that Condition can be!).
Conditions are the game’s non-specific quirks and compulsions that come as a result of over-stress, burn-out and the burden of their lives. Weird and absurd phobias and roleplaying quirks are the focus of the game’s stress mechanics, rather than real-world mental illness.
Roleplaying a stanza of poetry is not required, but my favorite bit of all this! Facilitating roleplay at the table of a player stringing together bits of rhyme - the more mustache-twirling-ly evil the better - makes me smile to think about! :)
Set List
Song Name [Stress Cost] | [Ancillary Anguish Cost]
Effect
Song of Kinship 3 Stress / Conversation | 1 A / Conversation
You
sing a necromantic ballad, calling on familial ties with those
consigned to Death’s Kingdom. You hold a conversation with a corpse, can
communicate information to it and ask three questions.
Song of Consignment 2 / minion | 1 A / minion
You
sing a song of command and delegation, appearing remotely through
shadows, dreams or fire to one of your Minions. You can freely exchange
information between yourselves, and can change their Downtime Action.
Minions take Downtime Actions when the PCs set them to tasks, most often before they leave from their party stronghold. This song essentially lets you exchange information with them, but also change your mind on which Downtime Action to take. The minion may get a penalty to their action if they get too many orders.
Song of Dismay 4 Stress | 1 A
You sing a song of DOOM that sunders morale like shields. Test Dread vs a difficulty determined by the most powerful enemy set against you.
If successful, all foes break morale and flee!
1 Animals | 2 Mortals | 3 Magical Beings | 4 Foes | 5 Other Wraiths / Villains
Foes being named, stronger than normal enemies. Defeating foes - as well as humiliating them, conscripting them into your service, or destroying their reputation - nets a PC some XP.
Song of Dolor 5 Stress | D2 A
You
sing a song of distress, grief and anger at the plight of your
existence, your woe shaping the world like a knife to a carcass. If you
sing for the duration of a Lull, the entire party gains the benefits of a Quietus instead.
You do not benefit from this refresh, as you take the burden of these
sorrows on yourself.
Lull (a rest to catch one’s breath) → Quietus (resting in a dark place for the sun to set)
Song of Laze 3 Stress | 1 A
You sing a song to make enemies powerless before you. The target of this song may be any normal creature. They save versus your Dread score.
On a failure, the creature falls into a ceaseless slumber.
Only your willing completion of the song’s final stanza releases them to wakefulness.
Song of Keening 4 Stress | 1 A
You sing a wailing, grieving song in remembrance of a fallen comrade.
If you sing this song in the time period after a PC has died - but before they return back from Death’s Kingdom - you may Test Dread.
For every success you gain on this singing test, you gain 1 XP (up to a maximum of the number of XP that PC has spent on powers)
Death is a resource for YADN PCs. They can die six times, returning more experienced and more wizened by their increasing familiarity with death. This song is inspired by the Funeral mechanic from Kill Jester’s Errant, letting you “buy back” XP from a dead PC. There’s perhaps even more opportunity to do so here, with frequent deaths…
Song of Castigation 3 Stress | 1 A
Pick a Minion. You psychically castigate them, spurring them on to meet your demands through a reminder of failure.
Before the next Sunrise, that Minion’s Leader (a PC) can reroll one Test associated with the Minion’s proficiencies.
In addition, the Minion has a Bane on Resistance Rolls until the next Sunrise.
Minions - besides being NPCs that work towards a PC’s interests - also provide skill bonuses and knowledge. Even without them present, just having a minion under the thrall of your shadow makes your PC more adept / well-rounded. Verbally castigating a minion can help a PC once at the cost of rattling them. A minion failing a Resistance Roll is bad, likely resulting in scars or death. Corporal encouragement is more bad than good, actually!
Song of Deceit 5 Stress | D2 A
You sing a song of seduction, stealing-away the loyalty of another lackey.
Pick a Minion of another PC. Until the next Sunrise, you steal the proficiency they usually give to their Leader, adding it to your own Tests instead.
You do not become their Leader, but they can’t help but assist you instead.
Song of The Contest 4 Stress | D3 A
You sing a song of challenge, pitting your own legend against the infamy of your Foes in the hearts of the living. Pick a Foe. Until the next Sunrise, you add a Boon to Gloom Tests made against that Foe and their forces / minions / close allies.
If you slay them, their Alliance must make a Command Test versus your current level of Anguish or disband.
This uses a lot of placeholder language, but the idea here is that factions opposed to the PCs might be seduced to a duel, their organizational cohesion shatters upon the death of a powerful leader. Songs can only take effect if their target can hear them, so in a situation that allows this power to be attempted can aid in the building of drama!
Bewitching Song 5 Stress | D3 A
You sing a song of capturing the heart of monsters, seducing them to your service through song as well as force.
You gain a Boon to Malice Tests made to turn a monster into a mount in your service. If you already have a Boon to such Tests, instead you may reroll the first Test you make (but must keep the result of the second).
All
PCs start with mounts and can gain access to more powerful ones as the
game goes on. To get a really unique, powerful steed (think manticore,
dragon, corrupted unicorn) a PC has to subdue it and wrestle it like
Hercules with The Nemean Lion. Or, Hercules if he wrestled the Nemean
Lion until it let him ride around on its back.
This
song gives them an edge - even as one of the game’s playbooks will also
be better at cavalry skills, so I have to balance that that character
could learn this song!
Song of Beguiling 8 Stress | D3 A
You sing a song of captivating, inflammatory confidence that alights even the hearts of Foes.
Contest Gloom with a nearby Foe.
On
success, you seduce that Foe to your side. You gain the normal benefits
of defeating a Foe (XP, etc) and now they are a Minion.
Work with the GM to see what two skills they would add to your dice pool!
(This does not raise the limit of how many Minions you may have at any time).
Potentially the most powerful song, so it also has the greatest cost: either 8 stress (8 out of 20!) or between 1 and 3 Anguish.
These are the songs I’ve drafted from whole cloth! They’re still placeholders, and might be accompanied by more direct ripoffs from the Songs of Power (sing a forge into existence, sharpen a weapon, travel unseen, etc). This set-list helped me figure out more of the game’s unique activities and how to facilitate PCs doing them.
These songs all let a PC be better at one thing - turning a monster into a mount, sending out a network of minions, supplanting and destroying Foes - but these are all regular activities for the undead villains! They’ve created a window for me into the kinds of activities the game encourages and supports, firming in my mind how XP will end up being rewarded. Through villainy! And also defeat of Foes - not necessarily killing, but defeating and supplanting.
Terminus
Thank
you for reading! YADN is my personal labor of love, and talking through
my design choices, conundrums and quirks helps me sort through my own
Anguish!
I hope to keep sharing tidbits, subsystems and oddities from YOU ARE A DEATH (K)NIGHT as they are available.
Really this leads me back that I need to keep iterating on core mechanics like conflict resolution, playbooks and character creation. I couldn’t resist this, however :^)
And as always, keep being creative!
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