Coffin of Souls

In the Coffin of Souls, death is only temporary. The world is made of metal and filled with flesh. Scholars in the Living Library attest that within the Coffin are only 1,111,111 souls, no more and no less.

 

Adam Burn

At the heart of the world are the four wombs, guarded by the sharp metal Angels of Phant. Everyone is born from these wombs fully formed and ushered out into the world, or if born imperfectly recycled mercifully back into the wombs. Wherever they may go after being birthed, whatever sights they may see, when they die they are born again from the wombs. 

Some people claim to remember how this all came to be, but after many deaths memories can get befuddled and mixed up until they look as far back as they can and can only remember the Coffin of Souls. Rarely, people are reborn with great chunks of their most recent life missing- which can be a blessing for some. It is not uncommon for people to seek the services of a warlock and have their memories erased.

The Body Is A Vessel

A. Shipwright

The body is a container shaped of flesh and filled with a soul. With each new body, a unique birthmark is always carried over- even if you don't remember your past that does not mean others will not recognize you. Each body is born with something different, changed. All flesh recognizes other flesh. Limbs can be swapped or reattached, bone plates reinforced, venomous tails attached, organs swallowed and integrated neatly: it's just a matter of how much the soul can handle. Too much flesh corrupts. 

A. Shipwright

Whenever you are reborn, roll below to see what mutation your body carries.

d100	Mutation
1	Beast jaws for an arm
2	Chameleon skin
3	Tentacular hair
4	Reverse joint legs
5	Gills
6	Removable eye-growth that continues to function off the body for 10 minutes
7	Vicious claws
8	Sticky digits, allows sticking to walls
9	Memorizer, can imprint something you've seen onto skin (yours or others)
10	Spine javelins, bone spears that regrow over time
11	Monkey's tail
12	Clay fingers, can shape your fingers into any shape
13	Split arms, can separate each of your arms into two arms
14	Bone plates cover your body
15	Venomous bite
16	Paralytic skin secretions
17	Unicorn horn
18	Two eyes in the back of your head
19	Enhanced homeostatic organ, never affected by temperature when not starving
20	Feathers, dealer's choice in colors
21	Vanta black skin, invisible in dark areas but light burns
22	Brainworm, you can spit a worm into someone's ear that will temporarily control their body
23	Coagulant saliva, your saliva can rapidly close wounds
24	Slug eyes, your eyes can extend out of your skull on slug-like stalks
25	Bone Jaw, your jaw is made of thick bone and reinforced muscle that allow powerful bites
26	Vulture Stomach, you can eat rotten, poisonous, or uncooked food with no issues
27	Inner Compass, you always know which direction the center of the world is
28	Ink Spit, you can spit a sticky black ink
29	Translucent Skin
30	Mesmer Eyes, your swirling eyes can stop one person making eye contact in their tracks
31	Mimic Chords, you can mimic any sound that you have heard before
32	Viscous, you can become a puddle of flesh with great effort
33	Acid blood, your blood burns attackers
34	Tentacle arms
35	Petrification, you can turn your body to stone for up to an hour
36	Knife arm, one of your arms ends in a sharp bone knife instead of a hand
37	Bloodwine, your blood is naturally alcholic
38	Heat Exchanger, by touching two objects you can transfer heat from one into another
39	Eye Lights, your eyes can act as flashlights
40	Hound Nose, you have an exceptional sense of smell and can track based on scent
41	You can change your sex at will
42	Scorpion Tail
43	Size regulator, with effort you can shrink down to 3 feet tall
44	Wings
45	Thumb Lighter, you can create a small flame from your thumb
46	Flesh bombs, apple sized explosive growths on your back
47	Sharp beak
48	Clawed avian feet
49	Bone Grow, your bones can regrow at an unnaturally fast pace
50	Stomach Rat, a rat companion lives in your stomach. You can see through their eyes but they can only leave your stomach for an hour at a time
51	Banshee Wail, once per day you can emit a stunning sonic screech
52	Chainsaw Limb, one of your limbs can become a bone chainsaw
53	Changeling, you can change your body over time to resemble anyone that you have seen
54	Insulated, you do not conduct electricity
55	Deer horns
56	Quadupedal, like a wolf or dog
57	Rib Trap, your chest cavity is a mouth and you can extend your ribs out and snap them shut
58	Stench, the smell of your sweat is nauseating
59	Hammer Fist, you can morph one of your hands into a bone hammer
60	Sticky, you can stick things to your skin where they harden in place
61	Inverted, you have a thick bone exoskeleton
62	Fins, you have fins that extend in water
63	Smoke chamber, you can fill a room with obfuscating smoke
64	Spinal Cannon, your spine can extend and fire objects. Requires stabilization and ammunition
65	Plagued, you can absorb a disease from someone else and safely incubate it in your own body
66	Mood lamp, your skin is faintly bioluminescent and glows different colors with your mood
67	Snake tail, your legs are replaced with a fleshy snake body
68	Scales
69	Inflammable, your body cannot catch fire
70	Scissor Arms, you can combine your arms into a pair of sharp, large bone scissors
71	Hibernation, when near death or at will you can put your body into a hibernation state for up to 10 years
72	Teeth, you grow teeth from all over your body
73	Chlorophyllic, you are tinged green and must be exposed to light for at least six hours a day
74	Camel back, large sacks in your back can be filled with liquid
75	Tracker, you always know the direction of one person you've touched before
76	Internal Dowsing Rod, you always know the direction to the nearest body of water
77	Harp Strings, thin fleshy tendrils lead from your body to your arm and can be played like a harp
78	Thunder Fang, your bite carries an electric shock
79	Bonesense, you can sense bones within a 60 foot radius
80	Mind Meld, with time you can share your memories with another, or view theirs
81	Sentry, you sleep with your eyes open and wake up when your eyes see movement
82	Slippery, your body is covered in grotesque tear ducts that can make you slippery at will
83	Reach, you can extend a limb up to two feet past its normal length
84	Blood Leech, you can heal wounds by leeching blood
85	Crab arm, one of your arms is a powerful crab-like pincer
86	You can extrude webs like a spider, allowing a web spray once per day
87	Fire belly, you can breathe fire like a dragon once per day
88	Heartsense, you can sense heartbeats within a sixty foot radius
89	False Life, you can perfectly feign death for up to an hour
90	Reflective, you can turn your skin reflective for up to an hour
91	Powercell, you can store electricity in your body and use it as sustenance or to power a device
92	Rollerblades, your feet can extend bone rollerblades
93	Hypersense, you can elevate your heart rate and predict what's about to happen, functionally allowing you to rewind time by ten seconds once per day
94	Bodymolder, you can suppress any other abilities and reveal them at will
95	Scytheblades, you have hidden bone scythes in your arms
96	Cancerous Touch, you can implant tumors into flesh you touch that you can trigger to explosively grow at will
97	Pyrokinesis, by focusing, you can set something you see on fire
98	Rotfiend, by focusing on anything organic you can cause it to rot. Continuing to focus makes it rot faster
99	Telepathy, if you focus you can hear surface level thoughts
100	Telekinesis, you can move objects you can see as long as you could move or lift them with your own physical strength

Mutations not tied to a specific limb are granted by an organ somewhere within the body. You can attach/integrate new organs and limbs as long as the source body hasn't been dead for more than an hour. Most abilities are stressful to use and can cause harm if used too much in a short period. Integrating more of the same or similar abilities strengthen them. Each body carries a unique, identifying birthmark tied to the soul as well. Players should describe what their birthmark is. 

Being reborn can be a traumatic experience. The Angels of Phant allow an hour of acclimation before they usher people out of the wombs. There's no telling which of the four wombs you will get reborn into. The halls outside could be empty, or they could hide a group of reapers looking for easy prey with parts to harvest, a slave-hunter eager for new stock, or a hungry Madness. 

In the more civilized areas, people can pay insurance for a team to locate and rescue them when they are reborn, but for everyone else their best bets are a mad dash away from the wombs and out towards their homes- if they still remember them. 

Leaving the Womb

huleeb

The skeleton of the world is metal. There are three kinds of known metal:

• Schipt: Dark grey and near indestructible, it makes up the skeleton of the world.
  
• Wyre: A variety of different metals, anything that can conduct electricity is called Wyre.
  
• Chime: The rarest kind of metal, it carries a pale pearlescent sheen. Chimeworkers can sing to this metal and change its shape to their whim, creating all varieties of special machinery, art, and weapons.

Long long ago, the world was strung with lights and splashed with color. People lived all around the wombs and everyone ate and drank freely, spending their days molding the world, studying the sciences, and creating art. Those days are long past now, and even those with the clearest of memories can barely recall it. Now the world is dangerous, and the fires of safety and civilization dwindle in fortified halls where power still sings in wyre and people are afforded dignity. 

Some halls still have working power sources that provide heat and light, and some have running water provided directly out of outlets in the surrounding schipt. Small polities dot the halls and increasingly groups keep to themselves as the threats of roving reavers and Madness grow every day. 

As common as schipt is moss, fleshy growth that creeps along the walls and ceiling of much of the world. Textured like flesh and growing almost everywhere, moss is farmed for thin, tasteless meat and bone used to create the majority of crafts for civilization.

Some major groups around the wombs:

Eduardo Pena

Soggrhal: The free city of Soggrhal is a collection of traders and adventurers that has ebbed and flowed for many decades. Now it is the last major free city and its merchant princes pay handsomely for expeditions out into the world to bring back valuables and artifacts of the lost worlds that came before. A town of legends and stories of the distant reaches of the world, Soggrhal's citizens have many wondrous artifacts.

Market: One of the most longstanding cities, Market has occupied a central position in the world since its creation. Market itself is ruled by the Dragon, an enigmatic warrior king who enforces a peace across Market with an iron fist. Anything and everything can be found at Market, from food to slaves to chimeworks and warlocks. Life for the average peasant in Market is typically brutish and short, but the promise of making it big and attaining a higher position among the merchant houses is always lingering.

Far Ocean: Clinging to the walls of the Algic Mer, Far Ocean is the main producer of algae, fish, oil, and general foodstuffs for the world. Its whaleships are the only source of oil in the world and it is always looking for those willing to brave the Algic Mer on whaling expeditions.

Divine Kingdom: The only city still built around a womb, the Divine Kingdom maintains a strict hierarchy of titles, grants, and nobility running off of labor from serfs. In exchange for safety directly after rebirth, the Divine Kingdom extracts labor for one year- guaranteeing the right of citizenship for ten years for anyone who completes a year of service. 

At the top of the food chain, houses of hedonistic nobles play a cloak and dagger game of intrigue around titles, territory, and resources. The Divine King themself rules absolute, but has fallen into a cycle of negligence and hedonism that has seen the kingdom dwindle over time.

Dreamers of the Quiet Night: A sect of religious zealots, they offer the peace of temporary death to all who come to them. In exchange for resources or time, Tenders will induce a dreaming coma for dreamers and keep them alive as far as their donation will take them.

Reavers: Any of the wild bands of raving mad men on the verge of becoming a Madness themselves, they hunt the halls for prey and take sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain.

Circlebreakers: This secretive order is reviled across much of the world for their attempts to break the circle of death and rebirth, spitting in the face of the gifts of Phant. Rumored to possess all sorts of terrible weapons and knowledge, known Circlebreakers are blacklisted from most polities. 

Further out from the wombs are stranger and stranger sights, halls long abandoned and scraps of civilization ripe for the taking. Dangerous creatures now roam these halls, ranging from mossborne insects, ancient metal angels, and Madness. 

Lautrec Attilius

A Madness is what happens when a body is filled with too much flesh and its soul is twisted, becoming a slavering hateful monster of flesh warped around a tortured soul. Unknown numbers of Madness stalk the halls of the world and each is unique in its flesh and function. Killing a Madness is usually seen as a kindness, as the soul is then freed for rebirth- but many tales tell of soul-devouring Madness that cage their victims in their flesh- torturing them endlessly. 

Play in the Coffin of Souls

Player characters are various mutants with long histories and patchwork memory. The halls of the near world around the wombs are rife with civilization, hungry and violent and the halls further out hold lost treasures, still living civilizations, and perhaps even answers. Most equipment is made of bone with the rare pieces of schipt or chime going for high prices. 

Death is cheap around the Coffin of Souls, the only bonds that matter are social ones built with the various factions and groups. Though rebirth is near instant, people still fear the act of death as, well, it's painful and risks memory loss- with memory being the one thing aside from the schipt skeleton of the world that lasts. 

Player characters are troubleshooters and explorers in this world beyond death, finding their goals and purpose out in the wide moss webbed halls of the world, exploring the dread wrecks along the Algal Ocean, the spore-ridden Violet Wastes, the Ruined City of Mirrors, the Forest of Shades, and perhaps even reaching the Edge of the World.

True death is impossible in the Coffin of Souls, capture by a band of Reavers or being eaten by a Madness is a terrible fate- but death will eventually see one reborn again and again.

Worlds, Dice, Freedom

 

When I was young, I always enjoyed maps and gazetteers. I spent huge, formative parts of my childhood unattended and wandering libraries, browsing through history books with big beautiful maps and photographs, art histories and gallery books, and of course fantasy. Opening a fantasy book as a kid and finding a detailed little map sprawling across its first pages felt like discovering a a well in the forest. What more did its depths hold? How deep does it go? What lives in there and makes it its home? I would spend notebooks drafting my own maps; worlds painted out by maps alone covered in symbols and cramped notes, forgotten at the turn of the page for the next world. Picking up books began to have that same sense of wonder and curiosity as finding a new painting in Super Mario 64 and diving in to see what lies beyond.

Getting into the RPG scene, this fascination with maps and worlds held strong. For me, reading an RPG setting book was interesting only so much as I was drawn in by the world- my eyes glossing over any of the fiddly mechanical bits. Eventually, when I started running my own games, I was increasingly frustrated by those mechanical bits- the crunch that gunked up the game and slowed it down. I was interested in discovering stories, spinning tales of adventure and mystery, not interested in any way in identifying where in a five by five square a character was standing and whether or not they got an attack of opportunity on a fleeing goblin. 

Jon Juarez

Years later and with many, many games, systems, and sessions under my belt I am still presented with the problem of translating the grandeur of setting and world from headspace into meatspace. The problem, as near as I have been able to tell, is with systems and the tyranny of the character sheet and rulebooks in general. 

The crimes of the character sheet have been talked to death, but to summarize my issue with it is that the character sheet becomes the lens through which a player views and interacts with the world. The statistics and abilities listed on the sheet become the be all end all- the definition of how a player through the avatar of their character is allowed to interact with the game world. I encountered this problem most commonly when I started running TTRPGs and was running through 5e. I had players who had never played before who were laser focused on what their sheets said they were allowed to do, and I had players with a great deal of 5e experience who would likewise defer to the character sheet for all of their abilities and actions. Similarly, I've played in games run by 5e only DMs who have their own lock ups with doing things outside of the defined modes of play as highlighted by the sheet and the rules. 

Looking at it from a design perspective- the issue appears to me that the character sheet provided a tool- a hammer, and if you give a player a hammer then everything gets hit with a hammer and only a hammer. Likewise, when your system is focused entirely on the procedures of combat then the game gets mired in the application of the procedures of combat. While that may be some people's jam, increasingly I'm realizing that I prefer to run a game in the fiction of the game as opposed to the interface of established rules and restrictions. 

Free Kriegsspiel Revolution

 

And, conveniently, there's already a word for this thing I'd like to try. The Free Kriegsspiel Revolution, the ultimate in rules light (dependent), unshackling worlds from the burden of systems. Many links below, but the summary hits the exact notes of the problem I've been trying to put a name to for years: Play Worlds, Not Rules. It's changing the layer of player interaction in the game from interaction with the system as an intermediary for the game world to interacting directly with the game world.

I don't want to get too far in the realm of using words like proceduralism and diegesis here, but check the additional reading below if you're into that. For me, the form FKR takes is the simplest game of:

• Referee describes the situation
• Players ask questions about the situation
• Referee answers questions
• Players describe actions they take
• Referee describes the effects of these actions on the situation
  

No numbers or attributes, just characters and situations.

At the moment, I don't think I'll go fully diceless- at least on my end. As a GM I love random tables- but in general I plan to embrace dicelessness. Hearkening back to Constellation, which I ran earlier in the year, the vast majority of that was diceless and it ran smoothly. For an FKR style game to work, there are two things that are critically important: 

1. Mutual trust between the players and the GM. The players must trust that the GM will make rational rulings and judgements and is not biased against or for the players. Likewise, the GM must trust that the players are reasoning agents in their own regards. 
2. The GM must have a strong sense of the world and communicate it to (or with) the players.

This style of gaming reminds me of when I started running games and didn't have access to a printer for character sheets, so we would just use notebook paper and go. The sense of storytelling freedom where you don't need to box your imagined settings into the ill fitting restraints of a defined system is extremely freeing- and it makes all those old setting books still applicable- "Any rulebook can be pillaged and have its meat enjoyed as the skeleton rots in the sun, however a FKR referee will only consume whatever agrees with the world" - Weird Writer. For my own works I think I'll need to look at how I want to portray worlds and scenarios in a new light.

No gods, no kings, no rulebooks

Slaughter all of your sacred cows

 Play Worlds, Not Rules

Anyways, here's some cool maps I like while I ruminate more on this. Maps are fantasy. Make more maps.

Break!!

The Gackling Moon

Yoon-Suin

Ace Combat Strangereal

Mekton, Algol II

Hubris

UVG map snippets

Bone Age

I Roved Out

Kill Six Billion Demons- excellent RPG map material

 

Additional Reading:

A researcher at heart, increasingly I have three dozen tabs open when I write a post- so here they are.

FKR Non Exhaustive Analysis by Weird Writer to Roll to Doubt

Focus on the World series from Sam at Dreaming Dragonslayer

Diceless Violence, Decisive Combat, and Diceless Resolution by Sam at Dreaming Dragonslayer

A Way of Free Kriegsspiel Revolution  by Sam at Dreaming Draognslayer

FKR - Free Kriegsspiel Revolution by Larry Hamilton

Rules Heavy - Worlds and Classes by Chris McDowall

HUDLESS Adventure Gaming by Sofinho at Alone in the Labyrinth

Less Rules to Do More: Advancement by Justin Hamilton at Aboleth Overlords

Yes, You Can Resolve Action Without Dice And Do It For Years by Jim Parkin at d66 Kobolds

Non-Authoritative FKR Core Gameplay Loop Tutorial by Wizard Lizard

Dear Players, Description Is Not Fluff, It's Meat by Wizard Lizard

What is Artpunk? by Patrick Stuart at False Machine

What does diegesis have to do with games? by Nikoten at Pathika

A Manifesto For Proceduralism by Gus L

New Simulationism by Sam Sorenson 

The Tyranny of "Rule" from Labyrinth Lesbian 

Against Procedurality by Miguel Sicart

Matrix Games by Tom Mouat

JOESKY TAX

I have NOT been paying my taxes lately, so here's a table of cool lanterns I'm proud of from my Bars Aplenty supplement.

• Howler: A wolf’s head bronze lantern that howls when wolves are nearby.

• Insurance Policy: An inconspicuous lantern with a dead-man switch that explosively combusts two hidden flasks of fire oil three seconds after released.
  

• Sealamp: An orb of swirling sea glass with a handle on top, can be used to light the way underwater. The lantern fish inside must be fed every day.

• Puppeteer Lamp: This lamp has cutouts of monsters and animals that can be used to project false shadows to trick the unwitting.

• Spirit’s Lantern: An old wrought iron gravekeeper’s lamp. Once per night a spirit can carry this lamp for an hour. Follows simple instructions.

• Blasphemer’s Flame: This skull shaped lantern is powered by a Vampiric Flame. It runs for one hour for each HP fed to it.

• Cannibal: When unhooded, this lantern consumes any light source within 30 feet.

• Dragon’s Head: Forged from heartsteel, this legendary lantern can be blown into to make a dragon breath attack. 3 charges, must be recharged by being hit with a real dragon breath attack.

• Thief’s Accomplice: When shone, this lamp only illuminates the most valuable thing in the room.

• Twin Lamp: A double sided fairy-wrought lamp. One side casts light, the other casts darkness.

Real World Encounters

When I lived in Japan, I would go for runs before work at the abysmally early times of around 2-3am. It let me see a beautiful and empty part of the town, and sometimes I would have strange random encounters:

• A shiba puppy would occasionally be waiting near a turn and follow me for half the run. Eventually, we would encounter the old woman who was his owner and he'd play hard to get until I could catch him and get him on the leash. His name was Taro, sometimes I would bring a dog treat just for him. 
  

• Another runner came speeding around a bend and shouted "TIGER!" before ripping off at top speed. I didn't see any tigers, but the shadows seemed to be more lively than usual.

• In a parking lot near the seawall, a woman would set up a small grill before sunrise and buy fish from the local fishermen, then grill a few of them and feed the Overwhelming Cat Population.

• My normal route would take me along a small river inlet that I'd follow out to the sea. One night, I found lines had been run from one side of the river to the other, and in the air above were hundreds of koinobori (carp shaped wind socks). Without the wind and at that time of night, they hung still, eerily over my head as I ran under the lines.

• One night, I reached a park at the mid point of my run and found the trail was covered in thousands of small white crabs, the size of my palm. They weren't moving, just kind of standing there carpeting the side path. I turned back and chose another way home.
  

• Sometimes I would encounter a group of young and old women along the seawall diligently opening cans of cat food for the swarming local seawall cats.

• I changed my route through a more forested area and shortly into my run began hearing loud cracks wherever I stepped. At the time, I assumed this was just acorns or something, but as I looped back around and the sun was coming up, I realized that I had been stepping on acorn sized snails. The entire path was coated in them. After that, I decided to forego the forested path that early in the morning.

 

blurry still from an awful quality video

Where the inlet met the sea was a library. It was three-four stories tall and its ground floor was an open air garage that was usually roped off at night. One morning, at about 2:15 am, I heard a strange sound coming from the garage when I ran past it. My headphones were blasting either synthestitch or coloris though so I ran past. On my loop back, I heard the sound again and took my headphones out. That strange sound was circus music, echoing out from inside the dark open air garage. It sounded garbled, like it from an old radio. I couldn't see anything in the garage, and my run had lasted longer than I had thought and I needed to get back- so I didn't investigate further. 

For the next two-three weeks, each time I ran past that library between 2-3 am I could hear strange circus music. Sometimes there were voices that sounded like a manzai recording accompanying the circus music. Another odd feature was that usually I'd see fishermen out at that time of the morning near the library- but each time I passed and heard the circus music they were nowhere to be seen. To further test it, if I came by a bit later around 4-5 am there was no music at all. 

Finally, one morning I decided that I had to know where the music was coming from. After talking about it for weeks with coworkers, we thought the most likely source was some sort of speaker malfunctioning in the garage- or a gang of murderous clowns trying to lure joggers in to their untimely dooms. With no one willing to wake up that early and come with me, I checked it out on my own. Tucked away near the staircase that led up into the library I found the source- it was an old battered battery powered radio left about halfway up the stairs. At the top of the stairs was the glass doors that led into the library, a greenish exit light inside was all I had to see by. There was a man sitting at the top stair. I couldn't discern well enough what he was wearing, but he looked up at me and we made eye contact. He stood up, and I took off and continued my run. There would still be music playing for another three-four months. 

I'll end this with this photo. After a long night of inadvisable drinking we realized the trains had stopped running. Unwilling to pay out for a cab, we stayed out bouncing around Shibuya until the trains started again, and on the first train out we found this polaroid on the ground. Still have it around somewhere, it's a sort of cursed good luck charm.