Scampir

Everyone wants the simulationist dungeon crawl until I bring up CO2 poisoning and confined space hazards as the most common killer.

having the Demon Slayer wipe 4 mobs in one turn making me go 👀 wait is this like Destiny? Can I lean on my destiny 2 strike experience for Lancer encounter building?

More specifically, ICON has trash mobs that can sneak up on you so players have to either use AOE abilities to get ahead of the mobs while contending with more unique opponents. Seeing that the Demon Slayer job effectively has Ad clear has really opened my eyes to encounter building as something where I can lean on attrition as a way to take up player attention and change the mood of the fight. Pretty cool imo.

What I’m about to talk about is not something instructed by ICON. It might seem to contradict the rules of ICON from a certain reading, but I think my latest icon session went really well and I got good feedback from my players.

Context

Right now in my ICON game: the party of three has departed their village of Östrdigr and are currently in an Arkenruin beneath a blue lake. This lake, “Blue Hole” is deep in the Pine Barrens next to the Yeokin town of Sutea. A blight is slowly creeping towards Sutea, endangering logging crews; it’s source is this ruin which juts from the lakebed of Blue Hole. The players have arrived seeking to disrupt the diplomatic mission of the City-state of Tornstadt, forces of which had previously attempted to seize control of an Arkenruin near to the Yeokin village of Östridge which lies north of Sutea. This diplomatic mission is lending aid to Sutea, established on an old deal that the players have learned of from a previous journey to a Chronicler Vault and their local library. The mission here is led by Bantia of the Guild of Saints.

In terms of prep, I have my dungeon (which I'm aligning with some kind of massive infrastructure because I think that makes for an easy dungeon "purpose") and I have some fights, some treasure, but what I really need is an antagonist that the players won't just kill. I want to play as the Imperial NPC because I think it's fun and good to prod at my player's ideology as a roleplay prompt (ie Explain how what you as an adventurer do that is different than what the people you hate do in the dungeon). I'm never looking for a particular answer, to the point that I think being unable to answer is quite interesting. But still, this can't just be

So the players run into Bantia in the dungeon. It's a sort of sump-pump for the Pine Barrens that the Arken Empire used to pump water out of the region because it was flooded after they melted the glaciers to the north. It has since been inactive (the players reactivated it but I don't think they've really reckoned with that change yet) and years of sediment deposits and mudslides have swallowed it up. So, Bantia is here, spat up a stairwell after the players find the controls to the power plant and set the facility in motion once again. She is quick to introduce herself and strike an accord: don't hurt us and we won't hurt you. She shakes hands and whispers "pax" while doing so. And then I set the terms to the players, out of character.

Bantia is a saint. You can not harm her. She will not fight you, but you can not harm her.

Combat is a Fail State?

Now, Saint is an NPC job in Icon. It’s in the book of foes and is a kind of unit that applies the Pacified status to opponents. This makes them deal less damage. I really liked this, because Icon has this big tactical combat component, it’s interesting to see a class that’s focused on reducing damage. And I was so enchanted by this contradiction that I started thinking about how a character could be made that carried this relationship to violence into narrative play.

I think it's interesting that there's a job for negating damage and rendering characters "peaceful" but it just isn't enough for me if this is in combat. I need Bantia to be a larger than life, I'm talking shounen anime villain character in some regard, but the affect I want to evoke is tranquility. I know that Bantia can be used to deliver this really powerful identity as a representative of the Imperial faction that I'm developing in chapter 1 of my Icon campaign, but to do so I have to invert something that seems natural in ttrpgs.

There's an OSR principle of, "Combat is a Fail state" that when followed, perpetuates an understanding that you can try to talk things out until talks break down, and then you'll have to get what you want by fighting. Now, the principle has been successful in carving out space before a fight for negotiation, and gives room for opportunities to "avoid" fights as a reward. However, there's something about the ways that I've seen this adopted further that in the past lead me to assume that this is just how things work in the roleplay scenarios we use ttrpgs to navigate. We can talk until it's time to fight. Even in Armor Astir I have yet to see the sortie where we start with fighting and end with talking.

So, what if talking was the fail-state? What kind of person could I design where I could draw on enough insufferableness that discussing things with them would be so odious that, if you took away the ability to just murder them in a dark dungeon with no witnesses, would be met with some kind of alternative resistance? How about a saint from a syndicalist city state with imperial ambitions. I think that would be a great character to deliver a new premise of "talking as a fail state."

And, that title?

So, that's what I got out of the Saint job in Icon. The two moments I keep hitting in Icon is that 1st, I'm thinking about how it's fun to reveal a job that a character has, as a kind of iconographic reveal to their true nature (only revealed in no-holds-barred combat!) and 2nd that I miss when I first read the 5e monster manual and read the rich descriptions of how the monsters lived in the world so that you could deliver them to the players in their own context.

I have had a lot of fun cooking up this "Guild of Saints" stuff and thinking about how it works. Is there a guildhall of acolytes praying for Bantia's safety? Has she been annointed by some kind of titanblood ichor? Is there an Arkentech machine that somehow protects her from all attempts to harm her? It's been great fun.

And Bantia has really been putting the screws to the players. Some questions she has asked

• Why are you blocking the doorway?
• Why did you grab my safety line short when I was mid-leap to the window sill of the control room?
• Why are you in the Arkenruin?
• Who are you talking about when you say "the people whom I represent"
• What are you looking for in the Arkenruin?