Boasting for Mark of the Odd Games

2025, Feb 15, Saturday

I'm interested in alternatives to experience points that put some control of advancement in the hands of the players. Plenty of ink has been spilled about the issues with XP-for-defeating-monsters. Old school XP-for-gold pushes play into an extractive mode that is definitely interesting but isn't really what I want to pursue as a games author. I am more interested in player-led goal setting driving advancement. And, really, play in general.

Boasting Wolves

Luke Gearing's Wolves Upon the Coast¹ introduces the idea of making and fulfilling boasts to advance your character. At the moment a character makes a Boast of Heroic Proportions, they get a bonus to attack or gain a hit dice. They keep this bonus as long as they're not found to have shirked the boast. Presumably, it becomes permanent once the boast is definitively accomplished.

I love this as an idea seed. It puts goal-setting firmly in the hands the players and it nicely side-steps onerous bean-counting. It also points players not just at adventure, but towards doing big heroics.

ODD Boasts

The Mark of the Odd games I'm most inspired by, like Yochai Gal's Cairn and Chris McDowall's own Mythic Bastionland only kind of have hit dice. And don't really have attack bonuses at all. And, both have ability save and HP/guard progression through injury via their scar system, which I think is a novel enough approach that I don't really want to mess with it. Or, at least, I want to try designing with it first.

So, what opportunities do we have to have boasting drive advancement?

Attack Dice

Both Cairn and Mythic Bastionland have a novel approach to dual wielding. Characters roll damage with both their weapon dice and use the higher of the two. This gives a clear advantage without pushing up the top bounds of damage output.

Both games also have a gang-up rule. Each round of combat if multiple actors gang up on one target, they all roll damage and pick the highest result among them. This makes it so you can't just focus fire a target down in one round and maybe encourages players to try other angles past the first couple attackers.

Mythic Bastionland gives attackers more interesting options by introducing combat gambits. Gambits let attackers spend their attack dice to do stunts, like disarming their targets, or bolstering the chosen attack dice.²

I've been considering using bonus attack dice for awhile. They could represent training in a particular fencing style. Or some latent destiny or superpower. But, what if they just represented the power of your reputation?

Renown

Your character's name has renown. It starts rated at d4.

When you make a Boast of Heroic Proportions choose:

Gain a byname related to the boast's object. Such as "troll-smasher" if you've boasted to go run off a local bridge-troll.
Improve your renown one step (d4 to d6 to d8 to d10 to d12).

If you're found to have shirked a boast, you lose the benefit AND your renown degrades one step.

Bynames

A byname has two benefits:

When you make an attack in a situation bolstered by your byname, such as attacking a troll in the above example, you add your renown to the attack.
When you make an ability save in a situation bolstered by your byname, such as resisting being pushed to the ground by said troll, mark usage to that byname to re-roll the save once.

Clear usage to all your bynames when you host or are guested at a great feast.

This adds a couple mechanical greeblies that reward players for pointing their characters at big heroics and reinforce the idea of a character as a kind of renowned figure. Good for something in the direction of Mythic Bastionland or other heroic fantasy.

Personally? I'm developing this for Runefarer a mash-up of Mythic Bastionland and Mausritter with a vaguely Norse fantasy flavor.