[Review, Part 2] SOULBOUND RPG: Core Rules and Combat

Onward with my review of Soulbound, the Warhammer Age of Sigmar RPG! In Part One, I discussed the game's setting. I was quite positive about the setting (almost to my surprise). This time, I'll discuss the core system and the game's approach to combat and some other stuff. In this post, I'll have many positive things to say about the game's system (with a few grumbles), but a somewhat more critical perspective about certain aspects of the published scenario-supplements will emerge in my next, and hopefully culminating, section of this multi-post review (along with points of praise there, too).  

DISCLAIMER: As I noted before, Cubicle 7 supplied materials for a fair and honest review of the game. I received free .pdf review copies of the core Soulbound game, the Bestiary, and the Champions of Order and Champions of Death supplements. I also liked the game enough that I purchased the GM screen and several other game products. Please note that links on this blog to DTRPG.com contain affiliate links, which help support this blog's activities at no added cost to you. Thank you! 

In Part One, I noted the role this game has seized in my stable of RPG options: it's now my leading go-to game for short-notice, high-action, moderate-crunch tactical combat roleplaying with (super-)heroic characters (whew, that's a mouthful!). It fulfills, in other words, the vocation I'd hoped 4th edition D&D would satisfy at my table - my not-too-demanding, off-night, let's just rumble with a bunch of baddies because a player is away or I'm too busy to prep a regular session game. 

Let me explain why. 

THE CORE SYSTEM

...runs on a pretty straight-forward dice pool mechanic. PCs have points across 3 core stats - Body, Mind, and Soul. You also have levels of training in various skills, like Athletics or Ballistic Skill or Intimidation. To assemble a dice pool, you add your points in the Stat and in the relevant skill; so (for example) trying to break down a barred door would require a Body + Might check. The GM provides both the target number required for success and the number of successes required. This is written like so: 5:1, for a check requiring at least one result of 5+ among the dice rolled.

That's pretty easy to administer. This allows for checks with variable degrees of success, too, based on the total number of successes rolled. In some cases, the game will call for more complex and harder rolls - say, a 4:3 roll, where you only need 4+ on each die for success, but you need to roll at least 3 successes. This is less common, but it gets a little wonky. GMs are given a chart showing different target number/number of success combinations ranked by difficulty, to aid in eyeballing the best difficulty level, but honestly this seems a little creaky and opaque. In play, however, I've tended to just ignore most of this complexity, almost always calling for only a single success but ratcheting up the target number to 5 or 6 if I think something should be a little more challenging. 

[By the way, the game also supports an easy advantage/disadvantage mechanic, but only within the combat and opposed-roll sub-systems]. 

COMBAT

Though I've described Soulbound as my alt-4e D&D, one feature immediately distinguishes the two games' approaches to combat. Unlike the slow (to me) square-counting normal in 4e, default Soulbound combats take place on a map of abstract zones, each normally about 30 feet across unless otherwise specified (this can be quite flexible). I normally associate combat zones with more story-gamey systems (I think I first encountered them in FATE or some similar game), but I find it works really well here. Combat distances include arm's reach, same zone, adjacent zone, 2 zones away, or 3+ zones away. This allows maneuver and position to matter, so it's more precise than pure 'theater of the mind' combat -- but it is MUCH faster than a more granular gridded/square-counting system (interestingly, the core book offers guidelines in case you really insist on running with exact measurements or gridded combat - see pp. 298-299). Zone boundaries also make environmental effects and hazards really easy to adjudicate, along with special Area of Effect attacks. In the combats I've run, my players have had to think hard about exactly where and when to move, but the overall feel remained quite dynamic. Thumbs up. 

Here are some visual examples of zones in use. First, a more-elaborate-than-necessary setup; note that I was basically running Soulbound here as a tabletop skirmish game with my kids. In normal play, you can just dash down some sharpie or dry-erase lines on a blank space. Here, instead, I used Master's Atlas Worldcrafting Tiles and treated each tile as a zone, ignoring the square grid within each tile, then slapped down a bit of Warcry terrain and a bunch of minis: 

So much unpainted plastic! Clearly, heresy remains a key part of the Warhammer experience.

Notice the little gaggle of ratmen partially obscured by the wall at top left? If the game's weaker monster minions gang up within a single zone, they form a Swarm, which grows a bit more powerful but stays easy for the GM to control. All that bunching up also makes them convenient to devastate with heroic powers, of course ... in this fight, if I recall, the hero archer took out the entire skaven gang in a single round (!). In Soulbound, the little grunts are really there to get in the way, wear you down, or just make you feel awesome before you get stomped on by the bigger, nastier foes. 

Mapping zones for online play is pretty easy, too - at least the way I do it. I grab a free Dyson map, add some colored lines with quick home edits, and have a battle map ready to go, like this one:

For this Dyson Logos map, I drew my own zones in blue, and treated each room in the tighter confines of the manor house as its own zone, too. We had quite a fight here. 

Once a fight breaks out, characters act in order of their Initiative, which is static. You don't roll for it; you just note down the fixed Initiative # of everyone involved and then start cycling through them in order (though there are tactical actions that can change your place in that order). I've liked this fixed-Initiative system more than I thought I would. It's certainly simple. As a generalization, the weaker, Swarm-forming foes tend to act absolutely last, so players often have to decide whether to focus on cleaning out the mobs or prioritizing the deadlier but lone big-bads. 

Once your turn comes around, you can Move and take an Action. Well, in fact, you can usually do a whole lot more than that, but that is the basic action economy. It is stretched by two factors: the generous definition of Free Actions and the use of a spendable action currency, Mettle. You can use a Free Action to relocate anywhere in your current Zone, or to open a door, draw a weapon, or drink a healing potion. Since you can chug that healing elixir in between hacking apart a monster and running out the door, recovering from your beatings is surprisingly easy in this game. A bit oddly, the game proffers a liquid resource called "Aqua Ghyranis" as both your healing energy drink AND your market currency (in the game's setting, lumps of gold are a dime a dozen on one of the settled elemental planes, so precious metal has little value; but water that restores life, now there's a real commodity...). To heal via potion, then, you gulp down what in other games would be your gold pieces. 

Mettle  means you can ... do MORE. Most characters have access to 1 Mettle per turn; some can start with 2. At either rate, if you spend it, you recharge 1 point of Mettle back every turn. You use Mettle to gain certain mechanical bonuses to rolls, to activate certain miracle effects, or - more commonly - to take another Action. Since you'll start your turn with at least 1 Mettle, you are usually guaranteed at least two Actions along with your Move and Free Action, unless you spend that Mettle on some other awesome thing. This simple action economy gives players small but meaningful choices every single turn, and keeps them feeling competent as active agents on the battlefield. Oh yeah, but ... the bigger, bad foes can spend Mettle too...which gets scary. 

Combat attacks use the general dice pool system described above, with a few extra wrinkles. You'll determine your dice pool for attacks by adding points from your Body stat and the relevant Skill (Weapon or Ballistic Skill). Also, each character has a qualitative rating for Melee, Accuracy, and Defense. These are written as words; for example, a Skaven Gutter Runner warrior has Good Melee, Average Accuracy, and Average Defense. The six available ratings run on a ladder: Poor, Average, Good, Great, Superb, and Extraordinary. To attack someone, you compare your own Melee (or Accuracy, if shooting) to their Defense. The number of steps up or down between your ratings will determine the Target Number needed for successes on the dice in your pool. So, for example, I might end up rolling 5d6 for my attack, and if my Good Melee is one step above that Gutter Runner's Average Defense, then I will count die results of 3+ as hits/successes. 

This is an interesting move, design-wise. In recent years, the Warhammer skirmish game Warcry introduced something a bit like it - simplifying some of the traditional multi-roll procedures in Warhammer combat via a quick relative comparison between the combat levels of enemies. I wonder whether this was just convergent evolution, or whether Warcry influenced Soulbound's design? At any rate, I worried that constantly cross-checking these levels for every combat attack would be too fussy, but in actual play I've found that it quickly falls into the rhythm, and my players get attuned to the short range of possibilities - so that after a while, I can just say "he's got Good Defense" and they mostly nod and check for the needed target number. 

Many weapons will add to your # of successes rolled; conversely, enemy Armour will subtract from the total successes. Any remaining balance gets deducted from the target's Toughness. Dropping Toughness to 0 kills most foes, but PCs - and stronger enemies - have a separate Wounds track. There's a somewhat intricate system for Death Saves and recoveries that works ok. In keeping with the game's overall tenor, catastrophic damage is both a very real threat and pretty easy to bounce back from if you've got luck and resources on your side. If it looks, however, like your character is pretty much doomed, you can accept the inevitable and choose to go out in a blaze of glory -- with a pretty epic Last Stand mechanic. 

Worth noting: there are plenty of things to do besides just hitting the opponent. The game provides fairly simple rules for things like called shots, charges, defending a target or area, dodging, running away, pushing and grappling a foe, helping another character mid-fight, or even trying to verbally de-escalate an undesired fight right in the middle of the action. 

I haven't yet mentioned the PCs' secret weapon: Soulfire. This is like super-Mettle, drawn from a common pool shared by all characters whose souls are knit together in a party-wide bond (which generally means all the PCs except any Stormcast Eternal uber-knights or Lizardmen/Seraphon [the latter show up in a supplement]). This campaign resource recharges very slowly, so its uses are precious, but powerful. Spending a point of Soulfire can do some pretty impressive things, like choosing before you roll to make an entire dice pool count as if you'd rolled all sixes, or cheating Death to bring a mortally wounded friend back into action. Soulfire can be particularly helpful to maximize some of the spellcaster characters' abilities.

That's a fair bit of detail about the way you run combat. In terms of how it feels and plays, I'd say it is fast, tactical, and rewarding. Most turns provoke meaningful and sometimes difficult choices; player characters are both vulnerable but very, very competent. Almost everything is smooth and easy to run, though if you happen to have some characters imposing a lot of special conditions on others (Stunned, for example) then this can slow things down a little unless you track it efficiently. Overall, as I stated earlier, the game runs tabletop skirmish RPG wargaming in a faster and more pleasing manner than 4e D&D, which is just dandy with me. 

Another useful comparison, for me, is to Savage Worlds, another RPG with ancestral roots in tabletop wargaming (I reviewed the Savage Worlds: Pathfinder core rules last year here on the blog). SW is billed as 'fast, furious, and fun', though in play we found it to feel a bit swingy. That is, SW characters are capable of pretty amazing feats in combat or other challenges, but often because you get a lucky throw that cascades into a truly stunning success. Soulbound takes a different approach: PCs are much more reliably awesome, so you can count on doing somewhat epic things in most fights...but the opposition is dialed up, too, to match. The whole baseline is shifted up a tier; you remain vulnerable and aren't assured of victory, but you aren't just waiting around for the really spectacular rolls. I like that. 

Speaking of the opposition - who's out there waiting to kill/eat/corrupt/enslave your characters? Monsters and other foes are statted up similarly to player characters, though (again) most of them die at 0 Toughness, unlike your PCs. Many of the classic Warhammer baddies are here, along with many new ones from Age of Sigmar. Foes aren't just bags of numbers; they often have their own special powers that are both thematically evocative and mechanically interesting. The special abilities remind me a lot of 4e monster entries; like 4e monsters, however, they require the GM to take a good read through each one before combat erupts (at least ideally - or you'll discover mid-fight that you've missed reacting to some special trigger-condition, etc.). The core book includes a 42-page bestiary section. It is ... adequate. Well - it's good, in its own right, but it has limits. I'll talk about supplement books in my next review post, but I will note here that the separate Bestiary supplement would be my top recommendation for expanding the core rulebook. You could run games for a while without it, but a lot of Warhammer standards will feel lacking if you only have the core book. 

On that note, I was bummed not to see guidelines (or I missed them, if they're in there...) for creating your own monsters. You certainly can reskin and retool existing ones (there's already a healthy fan-made monster base online) but the game doesn't really prepare a GM for that [perhaps the licensed IP militates against it?]. More seriously, it isn't until the supplementary Bestiary book that the GM receives guidelines on how to design a "level-appropriate" combat encounter for your characters. Boo! (They're good but short guidelines, too, so it's not asking for a ton of work in the core). 

I often hang out in OSR-adjacent rpg design spaces where "level-appropriate encounters" are eschewed in favor of open worlds and responsible players. That approach definitely can work in Soulbound, but the overall lethality of some monsters is hard to pin down until you try them and their special abilities in play. So, in some ways, encounter design for Soulbound is an acquired art, not a science, but after running about half a dozen games of it, I feel I haven't mastered said art. 

MAKING CHARACTERS

Character creation involves a point-buy system, but it's kept pretty straightforward via some (optional) archetype templates. The core book presents 23 of those archetypes across a diverse species array of humans, kind-of-no-longer-human Stormcast Eternals, dwarves, elves, and tree-folk, so there's plenty of choice. These archetypes make it pretty straightforward to eyeball an interesting concept, make a few choices to taste, and then start playing. 

Once you get to know the game a bit better, however, it's quite easy (and book-legal) to build alternatives to the archetypes, or to create a completely different character from scratch. That does require, as I noted above, point-buying options from a pretty lengthy list. If you are familiar with the range of Skills and Talents (feat-like, sorta) then this becomes pretty do-able in about 15 minutes, but to get to that point, I first had to comb through the Talents list with an eye to specific tactical abilities I was looking for. 

A sample Archetype - you can use these for quick character creation,
or as a foundational template for a 'class' of your own.

Worth noting: when using the pre-generated characters available for download, or just the core archetypes in the book, don't take anything for granted. Take a moment to look up and read the description for everything. For example, we had run an official, pregen Dwarven "Duardin Skyrigger" for several sessions - with a pretty amazing steampunky 'drill launcher' on the weapons list - before I noticed in the core book that this weapon comes with a really heavy head, so that most characters will only carry a single reload. Oh. Well, that required new tactics. :-) Conversely, an item of clothing that sounded like flavor text on the Dark Elven Corsair's archetype page turned out to have quite useful special stealth effects. I suppose it's not rocket science to say "be sure to read the rules" but sometimes Soulbound's general simplicity can fool you into thinking something is straightforward when it isn't. 

As is pretty common nowadays, the character creation chapter includes somewhat more 'narrative' ways to round out your character and the group as a whole. These range from suggestions for names and physical-appearance details to questions about your background - and a random-roll table to provide backstory connections between PCs if you're having trouble thinking of one you like. The game also has you - you individually AND you all as a party - set short-term and long-term goals that grant milestone XP. XP points are exactly the same kind of thing you spent during character creation to buy new Skills, Talents, and Attribute levels (unless, again, you stuck with a pre-written Archetype that keeps all the relevant math hidden in the background for you). This approach offers the benefits (and drawbacks) of a milestone-XP system, but prevents a GM from railroading entirely based on their desired outcomes; players have an important say in the things they want to be rewarded for. 

Note that some of the game's initial supplements include players'-option books that really add a lot of further power and flexibility in character creation. 

We found in play that the pre-gen characters released by Cubicle 7 could be a little underwhelming in combat (note, though, that we really emphasized combat over everything else at our table while testing Soulbound). I decided to craft some characters to really shine in specific combat roles. This did involve ... the dreaded min-maxing! Happily even min-maxing in Soulbound doesn't really take up much time, so I could sheepishly enjoy my wannabe-3.5e experience... ;-) I created, for example, a Dark Elf corsair with a signature move; he can hamstring opponents and knock them prone. The fella plays like death on sneakers, a mobile guerrilla assassin who regularly changes the battlefield. While it's easy to create specialized troops like that, they do run the risk of being so single-focused that unexpected combat situations can make them feel less enjoyable. 

As PCs gain XP to spend on themselves, they can keep honing those precious combat abilities, or train up in non-combat related Skills. My own focus on running Soulbound as a tactical skirmish game is probably blinding me to some of its potential for longer-term campaign play, but combat is potentially bloody enough that I'd pity a character not well-suited to fighting, here. 

Creating a spell-casting character is not 'class limited' - rather, it depends on spending points to gain the Talents that grant access (either to cleric-style miracles or mage-style spells). Then, gaining additional powers under those umbrellas costs further points. Using the pre-set archetypes makes creating a spellcaster quite easy, but the point-buy option means you can create a sort of 'multi-class' fighter-wizard, if you want to combine/dilute the different specialties that way. 

Miracles and spells use different rules: spell-casting is essentially a gamble, requiring a dice-pool test to succeed. If you really blow the roll, there's even a "Price of Failure" miscasting table (p. 266). Though much less zany than DCC's miscast table, things can definitely go VERY wrong if this happens. On the other hand, spells can be pretty powerful! Priestly miracles are generally more reliable, either succeeding automatically at the expense of an Action, or requiring that you spend your Mettle metacurrency to power the effect (or keep it going for a longer duration). Both types of magic have diverse schools/domains that are well-connected to the setting material, and can make two spellcasters (even of the same 'type') feel quite different in play. 

OTHER STUFF

Along with an in-book core bestiary (see above), detailed setting description (see my previous review post), and a suitable discussion of rules for magic and equipment, Soulbound also provides two other short but noteworthy sections. 

One is a downtime system for PC activities between adventures/missions. This sort of thing has become more common in recent years - it was championed particularly by Blades in the Dark - and it lets players feel more connected to the campaign world while continuing to differentiate their characters. These activities might be as mundane as shopping for or maintaining equipment, or you might find yourself researching old lore or new inventions (or magic spells). Alternately - if you're fantasy Batman - you could keep up appearances with a fake identity. If you're a Stormcast Eternal, slowly losing bits of your humanity every time you return from death, you could spend time seeking fragmented memories from your own past, perhaps allowing the GM to hand you new story hooks. 

Also worth noting: a 13-page GM's guide section. Some of this offers your standard introduction to running an RPG. More interesting (to me) are the detailed tips on creating the feelings envisioned for Soulbound (the game "has four primary tones: mythic, hopeful, tragic, and dark") - or, if you'd prefer, making it your own and changing some fundamental aspects of the game. Want a game closer in tone to Warhammer Fantasy RPG's low-power grittiness? There are rules suggestions for that.  Considering some of the more obvious rules hacks? You'll find discussion and recommendations on house rules. Think it would be interesting to make some changes to the default setting? The book explicitly calls out running games in a different period of the world ... which aaaaaaaalmost implies "go ahead, use your own setting for this official Warhammer game!" 

For the record: I think it would be pretty wild to use these rules to run an old-fashioned, high-level D&D adventure arc, like Against the Giants...

The GM section also includes procedures for integrating Rumors and Threats into the campaign. This reminds me of Fronts in Dungeon World, and offers some structure for setting up dynamic campaigns. 

PLEASE STAY TUNED...I've one more post in this review mini-series, commenting on some Soulbound supplements, and then summing up my own overall impressions of the game. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming! 

Warhammer, Scratch-Built & Kitbashed - from a Deodorant Hovertank to "Chaos Stormcast" (!?!)

 Geeky readers of a certain age - those who cut their teeth long ago on the OG, first edition Rogue Trader 40k rulebook - may remember a time when White Dwarf encouraged players to build their own vehicles from parts at home! I remember reading about the 'deodorant stick hovertank' back as a teenager, and this ludicrous, brilliant idea lodged itself firmly on my hobbyist bucket list. 

Well. Not anymore. 

My kids and I like to play 40k (when I say "play 40k," let the reader be wise and understand: why bother with endless codex updates and complex rules when you can run your grimdark platoon- through fire-team-size fights more simply with Squad Hammer, Space Weirdos, the various One Page Rules systems, etc.?). To support our ongoing shenanigans, I decided to throw together a fighting vehicle suitable for use by pirates, rebels, or down-on-their-luck planetary defense forces. Something a bit ramshackle, with a 'Russian Civil War, but in space' vibe, would be just right. 

Here it is. 

I may add a few more cosmetic doohickies to the fuselage, but it's pretty much done. Of course, it needs paint, but "Spraypaint with adequate ventilation" and "January in Canada" are not optimally paired, so we'll see how soon I can get that done. I'm imagining a stripey camouflage pattern with local highlights thereafter. 

This was fun to put together! It is, quite literally, pieces of junk. The fuselage is an empty deodorant canister. The fins were plastic signs from a 'green army men' set (they had stickers with 'no entry' warnings or something like that). The "aft attitudinal-stabilizer nacelles" and their fuel lines are, of course, Apple headphone earbuds! I had an old set giving up the ghost that I just replaced, and I decided in an odd fit of inspiration to cut them up for the bits box. The turret is a floss box; the main gun was the plastic tube holding together a roll of dog-poo collection sacks (!). The little blue bushing around the gun barrel was a spool inside the floss container. Atop the turret are more pieces from the army men set, and the power plug from those headphones as a rather robust antenna. The sort of mandible-shaped fins 'welded' to the turret's sides are meant to add a bit of menace but also unprofessionalism to what I imagined might be, again, a pirates' vehicle. Those 'fins' are just bits of a plastic bread-bag closure tab. :-) 

We will have to see, but I've high hopes that once painted up properly this will do the space-scum proud, and satisfactorily mark the deodorant hovertank off my bucket list. 

I BASH, YOU BASH, EVERYBODY KITBASH...

In the top photo above, the three infantrymen in position near the tank are part of a four-man kitbashed fire team of which I'm quite fond. I don't think they're particularly clear in that photo - it's just detailed enough to show you that I'm no great painter - but you may be able to pick out their essential elements. I wanted to make some tough-looking troops who might be pirates, private security, etc. I used Chaos Space Marine bodies with no shoulder pads and no backpacks. I added Skitarii Vanguard helmets and a few parts crafted from plasticard or clipped from other GW bits (the fellow firing one-handed in front has a comm-unit or perhaps a detonator in his left hand; it was formerly just one of the doodads hanging from a Skitarii backpack). 

FOR ORDER AND GOODNESS, DOGS OF CHAOS! WAIT, WHAT NOW?!? 

Next up on the topic of kitbashing is something I can't take any credit for, but wanted to share. My FLGS runs a nice cabinet for re-selling used miniatures. This past Christmas, I acquired a really interesting collection of kitbashed Warriors of Chaos. In a nutshell, they combine parts from Stormcast Eternals ("good guys") and Warriors of Chaos ("baddies"), though as you'll see below there's more to it than that. 

First up, some cavalry:

Alright, that's Chaos-y...but check out that fella toward the back!

It's been made up almost like a little diorama: a charging Chaos Knight has impaled a falling Stormcast Eternal on his lance. Now, let the record show that this is a highly improbable lance-head for stabbing into plate armor, but otherwise, this is quirky and cool. 

Check out the general:

This guy's got some kind of Beastman helm or head, and there's an imp riding shotgun behind him. 

The modifications get more aggressive with the infantry. This fella, for example, appears to be a Stormcast Eternal, but with a Kroot Carnivore's head from 40k:

I believe this next one combines Stormcast parts with bits from the Tzeentchian variety of beastman:

Some of "the boiz" are more straightforward mixtures - Stormcast Eternals bodies with Chaotic helms and, sometimes, weapons: 

I find this a really interesting vibe. They definitely still read "bad guys" - but the use of orderly Stormcast parts moves things away somewhat from the normal "chaotic evil edgelord" feeling of Chaos Warriors. I almost imagine these guys like Pathfinder Hellknights - who are lawful evil! In fact, these guys make me want to come up with backstories about once-noble knights who fell into error as antipaladins through their own pride and hubris...but who probably still think they're the good guys. 

On the other hand...I call this guy the Mouth of Sauron.

If he was ever a nice guy, it was - oh, like way back in 2020 or something. 

Some other figures in the lot are more typical Chaos Warriors, but they're still kitbashed in interesting ways. This fella, for example, has a trident for a left hand.

And, bringing in a dash of science fantasy, here's a Chaos Warrior with a giant mechanical prosthetic hand. I've been trying to figure out what kind of part was used - it has a Necron-ish look to it - but I haven't figured it out yet. Any idea? 

ANYWAY - These are some leading examples from within the batch. Just a final shot of some of the gang together...

I'm really pleased to have got my hands on such a quirky warband with so much personality. In general, I find kitbashing really fun, and seeing someone else's handiwork is inspiring. 

Thanks for checking out the kitbash gallery! And speaking of Warhammer, I'm mid-draft in the second half of my Soulbound RPG review, and have plenty of other stuff I may talk about soon, too - so stay tuned. Happy gaming!

[Review] SOULBOUND: The Warhammer Age of Sigmar RPG - PART ONE (High-Powered Play, and Setting)

A year ago, I would have been surprised to read my next sentence. I really dig Soulbound. 

This game won't be to everyone's taste, but I consider it one of the best available options specifically for running high-powered, heroic, fantasy action adventures, whether in the game's official setting or in one of your own. In the past season, this game has taken over a supporting, but important, niche at my game table. Read on for my take on the pros/cons of Cubicle 7's Soulbound, the officially licensed RPG set in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar (AoS) setting, 'the Mortal Realms.' [This post contains affiliate links].

[This is Part One of a short series reviewing Soulbound. I'll update this post with links to the rest of the review once posted].

Those 'Realms' are what's left-over after the End Times destroyed the classic Warhammer Fantasy Old World. Like many old-timey Warhammer fans, I was dismayed when Games Workshop 'blew up' the Old World and replaced WF with AoS (in actual fact, the canonical Old World is still going strong, represented in Total War: Warhammer, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e, and an upcoming official return to regiment-based 28mm tabletop battles on the soil of the good ol' Empire).  But AoS? I appreciated the movement toward simpler gameplay with smaller armies, but otherwise it all looked rather silly. Let's be honest: at first sight, the whole thing looks like Art Deco 40k, with Stormcast Eternals famously lampooned as "Sigmarines," and Fyreslayer Dwarves  - oh, sorry, Duardin* - that look like they just left a nude beach in the Asterix comics. But after several years of development, there's actually quite a lot going on in this setting - and Soulbound shows that much of it is surprisingly interesting and creative. 

REVIEW DISCLAIMER

Before I continue, have the standard disclaimers: please note that this review's links to DTRPG.com use affiliate links, which help support my evil blogging services at no added cost to you. Also note that Cubicle 7 kindly provided .pdf review copies of the Soulbound core rules, Bestiary, and two supplements (Champions of Order / Champions of Death). I've enjoyed the game so much, however, that I also purchased four additional Soulbound resources/supplements on my own. I've now run the game ... five times, I think? Those sessions have all been combat-focused, so my perspective on the game has certain limits, but this review reflects concrete experience with Soulbound in actual play. 

*AoS/Soulbound do use setting-specific names like Aelves (elves), Duardin (Dwarves), Orruks (Orcs), but here I'm just going to call things what the rest of us normal geeks call them. 

I CAST DOWN MY ENEMY,  AND SMOTE HIS RUIN UPON THE MOUNTAINSIDE...

Ok, wrong world, but right power-level...

Before I say more about the setting, I want to talk about Soulbound as a great option for (super-)heroic fantasy gaming. In a nutshell, this game is my new D&D 4e. As a GM, I usually run quite rules-light games in the OSR, PbtA, or freeform traditions, but I'm also a wargamer - and here at the Gundobad residence we do a fair bit of tabletop skirmish gaming. In the past, I've run 4th edition D&D as a detailed tactical skirmish wargame.  I wouldn't want to run 4e as my actual RPG system, but I've used it when the gaming group has someone out of town, or I want to run a game but I don't have time to prep a regular session. Just grab a map and some characters, and have a scrum (my players are all bloodthirsty martial types anyway). But despite its reputation as a 'super-heroic' action RPG, 4e D&D can kinda drag. There's all that counting squares for movement...and at level 1, your PC will be trading nickel-and-dime hits with ... kobolds. At higher levels, PCs gain cool new powers, but if they fight level-appropriate monsters that aren't 1-hp Minions, they can generally expect to stay on a treadmill in which fights take about the same number of hits to slog through. 

Soulbound is my new 4e, my new 'let's run a low-prep tactical skirmish' game. Everything I wanted 4e D&D to be and do, Soulbound is and does, but better. Low-prep fights? Yep. Straightforward to run? Much more so. Genuinely meaningful and interesting tactical decisions? Yep. Interesting, distinct character builds? Yep (but faster and easier to build). Super-powered, heroic characters? Oh my word, yep. For example: 

In one recent battle, the PCs had to rescue a civilian hiding in a manor house before an angry orc raiding party could catch and kill him. The PCs cleared the place with little trouble: a Groot/Treebeard-like archer took out an ogre mercenary with a single bowshot; a human battlepriest summoned a vicious windstorm to keep foes from getting too close, and then proceeded single-handedly to mow down a full squad of goblins with her in the eye of the storm; and an elven corsair skirmisher dashed from room to room, using hit-and-run tactics that involved literally hamstringing orc foes. But then, the ground shook: the enemy's reinforcement had arrived. It was a giant. 

The archer ducked outside and snapped a shot at the giant. It was a good hit, but it did little to the approaching gargant. Up stepped a heroic Stormcast Eternal, an armor-clad semi-immortal champion, who called out to the giant with a challenge to personal combat! The giant obliged: it took a running charge, kicked the Stormcast and sent them flying about thirty feet through the air, then slammed its massive club down onto the fallen champion. Any normal warrior would have been pulverized; as it was, even the mighty Stormcast Eternal lay battered and near death. Then, the keen-eyed archer stepped outside once more, knowing that this was a do-or-die moment. Summoning all their inner reserves (ahem: in mechanical terms, burning two points of the key 'Soulfire' campaign resource), the archer let fly two arrows. One, two: right through the giant's eyes. The beast toppled, dead, and the battered Stormcast Eternal just barely rolled to safety, avoiding a crushing fate beneath the giant's corpse. 

That's the kind of action this game provides using legal, by-the-book starting characters. They're really capable. But they're also vulnerable, and players' tactics will matter. I've killed a PC in battle (Note: this game makes dying awesome with a Last Stand move). In our most recent game, the foes' objective was to capture a piece of loot, not just to kill the PCs. If their objective had been to win a last-character-standing deathmatch, I think that three out of four PCs would have died (in fact, they almost did anyway, but they pulled out a win in the end). 

On internet forums, I've seen fans describe Soulbound as an ideal Exalted-light, a way to play truly super-heroic characters from the get-go. I've read one comment that this game offers a good fit for running a Trojan War-themed campaign of mighty warriors empowered by supernatural agents - and I'd agree. I think this point is important to grasp before discussing the official setting. Soulbound is made to showcase Games Workshop's AoS Mortal Realms, but with some creative re-skinning, the system could serve any setting with fantastically powerful heroes facing equally dangerous foes. Come to think of it, if I wanted to run a Warhammer Fantasy game that matched the heroic tone of the old wargame instead of the grubby, rat-catching tone of the RPG, this would do very nicely. I've even wondered about re-statting monsters for a high-level D&D module. Hmmm...

In Part Two of this review (a subsequent post), I'll discuss the game's mechanics, and offer my thoughts on why they support easy high-powered play so well. 

AT WAR FOR THE REALM OF FIRE: NOTES ON THE SETTING

The game features and explains the core AoS setting, the Mortal Realms. In a nutshell, the Warhammer Old World was destroyed by Chaos in an apocalyptic frenzy, but a divine coalition led by the benevolent god Sigmar managed to establish a new order of creation spread across many elemental Realms, dimensions linked by Realmgates. The history of these new Realms involves titanic, back-and-forth contests between Sigmar and his motley allies versus resurgent Chaotic forces - along with quite separate factions serving Death (undead of various sorts) and Destruction (orcs, etc.). The King of the Dead claims right to all living souls, and seeks to snuff out life and free will everywhere - thinking an undead empire the perfect antidote to the teeming threat of Chaos. Now, the multi-way contests continue, whether in great still-vibrant cities or vast ruins ground down in those centuries-long struggles, with open warfare and cunning intrigue both playing a role. 

Sigmar's greatest champions are the Stormcast Eternals; like Norse warriors plucked away to serve in Valhalla, these were valiant fighters singled out for nigh-endless rebirth in Sigmar's service. They now rise anew in his forges each time they fall in battle...but with each rebirth, they lose a little more of their humanity. Other heroes of Order might be steampunk dwarves, or berserker dwarves who hammer red-hot magical rune-metal into their very skin before battle; keen-bladed witch-elves, or even elven soul-hunters from a hidden underwater empire; tree-spirits drawing on the memory of past arboreal generations; human merchant-explorers and battlepriests; or others. All of these and more can be PCs in Soulbound; with the exception of the Stormcast Eternals, all these also can bond together as the titular Soulbound, elite special-forces-like bands of adventurers who have magically fused their souls, strengths, and fates together in a shared collective. (Stormcast can join the party, too, but they face certain restrictions in exchange for greater individual power). 

For a deeper dive into the setting and its lore, see here. In this review, rather than rehashing the big-picture lore, I'd like to talk about the lower-level details of the RPG setting's main continent. Each of the Mortal Realms is vast, almost functionally infinite, so there is ample room to create your own little sandbox if you wish. But the game provides a helpful overview of one key corner of the setting: the Great Parch, a landmass on Aqshy, the Realm of Fire. Not everything here is on fire; the Realms are more balanced at their centers, so to really see something like D&D's Elemental Plane of Fire you'd need to move out far from the mid-Realm. The Great Parch is inhabitable, even farmable, and is surrounded by seas, but everything here features more heat/fire motifs than you'd find on other Realms. The place is also badly scarred with blood and woe by the incursions of Chaos; Chaos held much of the place under its thumb for an Age now past, and its forces still occupy many strongholds across the landscape. There's a lot here, though it isn't meant to shut out GM contributions. As the book notes, "A scribe could toil for a year and not even cover a fraction of the peoples and places of the Great Parch." 

Much as I'd initially dismissed AoS, and this game with it, my initial response upon flipping through the core book's discussion of Aqshy was "meh." But then I actually sat and read it. What I found was a wealth of genuinely creative, interesting, and inspiring ideas. Tasting notes? "A strong base of Warhammer Fantasy, with notes of Planescape, the Wheel of Time, and a lingering aftertaste of The Silmarillion." (Yep. Definitely some big, bombastic resonance with mythic tales like The Silmarillion, though not at all The Lord of the Rings. I mean, during the Age of Myth, a Chaos warlord killed the world's second sun, which was a great solar dragon). 

At a smaller scale, some of this stuff unsurprisingly evokes classic Warhammer or even LOTR against-the-Dark-Lord vibes:

For many centuries, the black-walled [Obsidian Fortress] was held by the forces of Chaos and was an abattoir of horror. The Khornate warlord known as the Thirsting Prince ruled the lands for hundreds of miles to the east and south from his throne of sinew and charred bone. During the Blazing Crusade, a force of Stormcast Rangers from Tempest's Eye infiltrated the fortress and slew the Thirsting Prince atop his ghastly throne. The Tempest Lords now hold the Obsidian Fortress, using it as a staging ground to assist in joint military endeavors with the Aspirians of Steel Spike against the unspeakable horrors that wander out of the Timestolen Empire. 

But overall, despite all the flesh-reaving Chaos thugs and sorcerers, Soulbound's setting isn't really "grimdark" - AoS marks something of a tonal departure from other Warhammer settings. There is real horror and desperation here, but there's also un-ironic hope that the good guys might win (yes, unlike 40K, which GW has officially declared void of good guys, there are real heroes in the Mortal Realms). There's also room for a variety of agendas and interests. Consider this: 

Bataar was once ruled by a series of merchant-kings, each of which controlled a swath of territory and trade. With the great diminishment of their people, the heads of the surviving kingly lines now all rule together through the Bataar Trader's Guild, which is headquartered in the Floating City. To determine prominence for each year, those that sit at the Wide Table play the 'Game of Razored Gifts'. Each competes to see who can give the others the most outlandishly unique and generous tributes; a player's ranking in the game determines their social influence. The merchant-lords are thus always looking for anyone that can assist them in finding something special for the next round.  

That's both a fun hook for adventures and an interesting use of a real anthropological phenomenon from some cultures. 

What else might one encounter in the Great Parch? We have extra-planar immigrants loyal to Sigmar who (in theory) are staunch allies to the indigenous planar locals; in reality, prejudices run in both directions, and some of the locals see Sigmar's great counter-invasion against Chaos as just the latest movement sweeping through, one that will fade in time like all the others (hmm; one detects hints here of the ambiguities in modern Afghan conflicts). Among the resurgent Bataari merchant-lords, wealth rests especially on trade in fabric - an iridescent silk woven from the thread of Flamespiders. Yep, these are spider-ranchers, and sometimes they even like to lure in giant spiders from the wild to refresh their breeding-stock - but lately, the creepy-crawlies who wander in too often bear the taint of Chaos infections. There's a stronghold perpetually threatened by the machinations of a dark Chaos lord, but the loyal defenders are cursed with foreknowledge of their own death-circumstances...which means that their own defenses constantly adapt as their mortal premonitions reveal each changing ploy and strategy adopted by the enemy. A mountain fastness called The Forge Anathema is home to what are clearly Chaos Dwarves, a welcome hint at an old-canon Warhammer fan favorite. Buried citadels and megadungeons conceal barely-understood superweapons left behind by one of the Realm's earliest empires. The passes of a great mountain chain are troubled not just by bandits, but by a "pyromaniacal cult" led by what is essentially an evil ogre-mage. A lake haunted by night-reveling ghosts reflects the constellations of another world, and may hide a portal to the Realm of the Dead. The major city of Hammerhal, built around a Realmgate, sits astride planes, with neighborhoods on two Realms. The fortress-city of Hel Crown, built by Chaos worshipers in an active volcano, is defended by living, sentient lava flows. Surrounded by thick, vibrant, choking jungles, the city of Anvilgard is perpetually wreathed in green defoliant mists that prevent vegetation from overrunning the city; in the shadow of those mists, an organized-crime cabal of elven corsairs and blood cultists secretly dominate the city's affairs. 

So, I find it an evocative, interesting setting. Each region is colorfully mapped (and the .pdf purchase at DTRPG includes a big map file of the whole continent). I like the map, though, um, if we zoom in at one point...

Huh. Tell me that's not Southeast Asia!
Rondel Wick = Hainan, Cape of Spines = southern Vietnam,
Crescent Sea = Malacca Strait, the area around Vandium = Bengali Ganges Delta,
Clavis Rift = Borneo or the Philippines, etc.?
So ... that's a little weird. 

WRAPPING UP PART ONE

Overall, then, I find the game's official setting interesting, especially when it offers local color and not just the big 'meta-fiction' of the developing Age of Sigmar storyline. As noted earlier, however, my main engagement with Soulbound has involved combat-focused, tactical skirmish sessions. This does mean that we haven't really leaned on the setting in play, which I suppose is a pity, and something I think I'll try to change. For players not versed in the official AoS lore and setting, the core book can offer a great deal of orientation and help, but there is a lot going on here, and I can imagine it taking a while to get into from a cold-start (some of Cubicle 7's published resources for the game offer a deep-dive into specific local cities/settings, which would help a lot). 

In upcoming segments of this review, I'll plan to discuss the core system, why I think it works so well for making high-powered play easy to run, the process for generating characters, the selection of monsters in the Core rules and Bestiary, and the player supplements, Champions of Order and Champions of Death.

Thanks for reading!  

What If (All?) Secret Doors Were (Obviously) Trapped?!?

 Here's a weird idea.

(It's final-exams grading/marking season for Professors ... which makes chatting about a weird gaming idea much more appealing than trying to cram in yet another student paper right now). :-) 

Last year, I posted an idea about secret doors in dungeons that seemed to go over well: what if (almost) all secret doors could be detected automatically, but risking the necessary time/encounter checks to figure out how to open them offered the real challenge for dealing with such concealed portals? 

Anyway. As one does, I recently read another blog post about managing TRAPS (and for the life of me, I'm sorry to say, I can't even remember which blog it was, let alone whether this was a recent post or an old one. Finals-exam season brain, I'll conveniently blame you again). That post talked about making traps obvious, automatically detectable, so that figuring out how to deal with the trap (without just rolling to disarm it) was the challenge. [Of course, this is an idea that many people, including Chris M, have written about too]. 

[EDIT: I think it was a now year-old Ben Milton/Questing Beast video, titled "Stop Hiding Traps!"]

Tonight's idea: what if you combined both of these, like so...

COMPREHENSIVELY TRAPPED SECRET DOORS

1) With their keen eyes and instinct for [getting themselves in] trouble, adventurers usually have no trouble picking up on the subtle clues that point to concealed doors or hatches. If the party spends a full turn exploring a room, they automatically detect any secret or concealed doors therein. 

2) Pesky dungeon-builders know how inconvenient adventurers can be, and they plan accordingly. All secret doors have a 50% chance of being TRAPPED. [Or, enter your own weird edgy version here. I'm particularly thinking about: what if ALL secret doors were trapped, without exception? And what if hardly anything else were trapped? "The trapped door" luring players on to hidden treasure would become its own dungeon-locale motif. Huh. ].

3) Make the existence of a secret door and a trap on said door obvious to PCs, and then let them act as they see fit. Traps must be navigated, defused, mitigated, dismantled, or endured through fictional manipulation, not nerfed through dice rolls. 

4) Remind players that secret doors usually hide juicy things, like treasure or new dungeon levels. Cackle as they die in terror. 

YEAH, BUT, WELL, WHY?

Shrugs. 

Actually, I think this could do some interesting things. It offers a non-mechanical, non-gamist (if you will) way to address the problems I mentioned in my post last year about secret doors (minor details like prepping cool hidden content that likely won't get discovered ... or running modules with no detail on these important hidden doors, etc.). 

Now, running things this way also ADDS work. You need some coherent traps, with clear mechanical function, and ways to signal those aspects to inquisitive players. 

But you'd gain ... oh, I don't know, I'm sort of spitballing here. But you'd gain a recognizable signature aspect to dungeons - the players will learn to love the lure of more-exotic treasures in hidden halls, and they will learn to dread the sting of mis-handled traps, and they will have a clear incentive/risk-reward balance to think through, letting them decide whether to bother with trapped doors or not. 

IMPORTANT LEGAL CAVEATS

I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I'm not saying this is a good idea, mind you, but it strikes me as offering some intriguing possibilities. 

That is all. A few ungraded papers still beckon, mockingly...

A Checklist for Designing a Faction's BASE or LAIR - Infrastructure for Goals, Needs, Conflicts.

Here’s a set of ideas to support faction “base” design. 

The caves from Keep on the Borderlands are infamous for hosting a bunch of factions' lairs in the same neighborhood, with little coherent sense of how they'd all coexist. The tool below offers a quick way (I hope quick?) to think about the scope for conflict or cooperation between the lairs in an area, or to make such lairs individually feel more sensible.

A post yesterday over at The Wandering Gamist suggested a One-Hour Dungeon contest (instead of the ubiquitous one-page dungeons), with an interesting note:

Even if the products themselves end up not being very interesting, I could see such a thing leading to the development of tooling and processes optimized for saving time.

That got me thinking about some ideas I'd never properly written down or posted earlier this year: a mission-based adventure generation table, and a way to speed up good base design. Well, now I have, at least for the second part. You might use this with a blank piece of paper, or you might take a random map or even re-key a description from a module, and use the checklist to verisimilitude or hooks for interaction. This checklist assumes that the area being designed (which might be aboveground, or be all or part of a ‘dungeon’) is controlled by a basically coherent faction, or part of a faction, acting in (mostly) coordinated ways. 

This has probably been done before somewhere else, and likely better, but it was on my mind. Please let me know if it's helpful.  

Again, the goal here is to speed up lair/base design while promoting a realistic ‘dungeon ecology’ that is exploitable and open to conflict with other factions. 

I think this would be most useful when paired with two things.

First: Instead of keying each dungeon/lair/base room separately ( a bottom-up approach), consider starting at the top and thinking like a faction leader. Create an Order of Battle for the faction: how many guards or other personnel do they possess here, in total? Now, as you answer the questions below, break up ‘your’ guards into little squads, and assign them to logical places on the map, according to the logic of this current faction’s needs and goals. 

Second: I am a big fan of the ‘fill in the blank’ faction design method. I didn’t design it myself, and alas, I can never remember which blog I got this from, but it’s really smart. For each faction, just ‘fill in the blank’:

FACTION _____ wants GOAL _____ but they face OBSTACLE ______, so they will PLAN _______. 

The checklist below highlights base-design aspects that might bring a faction into conflict or cooperation with other factions. One can probably get a nice hornet’s nest of tension just by designing two or three faction bases near each other, making sure that their infrastructure needs conflict. This is, of course, before one starts adding more arcane, fantasy-themed goals, like finding the skull-stone of Arbat before those hobgoblins can summon the End-Storm. 

Alright, here we go. No doubt, this isn’t comprehensive and could be refined, but I hope it aids in thinking quickly and realistically about lair design. 

FACTION-OCCUPIED BASE/LAIR-BUILDING CHECKLIST

How does the Faction use this base?

+ permanent major base

+ permanent minor outpost, subordinate to a bigger base somewhere else. 

+ temporary or occasional major base; the faction head-honcho is here, but the group moves regularly. 

+ temporary or occasional minor outpost

+ temporary/emergency shelter or outpost; they didn’t expect to be here long…what kind of trouble brought them, or is keeping them here? 

A permanent site, especially a major base, should have a stable solution for every one of the needs listed below. At smaller sites, or at temporary and emergency sites, a faction may be making do with some of those needs unmet. This may create opportunities for inter-faction conflict or cooperation. 

Why is the faction using this base? (Likely, one or more reasons apply) 

+ We need a place to live or shelter

+ Projecting power in the region (or displaying/claiming prestige)

+ Controlling movement in the region

+ Gathering information from the region

+ Securing access to raw resources in the area

+ Enabling access to trade

Performing religious/cultural rituals

How does authority work here? Who is in charge, how does the chain of command work, and how effective/stable is it? 

+ Which 3 NPCs would most disrupt the faction/setting if they were killed, turned as double agents, compromised, captured, set free, etc.? 

What is the source of AIR SUPPLY?

I suggest using this one very sparingly. Caves often have quite good air, and being able to breathe is an essential element for most fantasy locations. However, some underground locations do run into fresh air-supply problems, whether due to poor ventilation or off gassing from minerals and substances beneath the earth’s surface, so - once in a blue moon - this could be worth adding as a wrinkle at a faction’s base. 

What is the WATER SOURCE?

• A well, lake, or running water, inside the base’s controlled perimeter. Mark it on the map. Note: this could offer a way in/out. 
• Some sort of aqueduct carries water from outside the base to inside. This is like the option above, but the aqueduct might be vulnerable to sabotage or infiltration. Some potential for INTER-FACTION conflict. 
• A well, lake, or running water, outside the base but nearby. Note: open to INTER-FACTION conflict. 
• A well, lake, or running water, at some distance from the base. Note: open to significant INTER-FACTION conflict.  
• Silly, this magical faction has no need of water.

What is the FOOD SOURCE? 

• Food is produced or harvested within the base. Mark it on the map. 
• Food is produced or harvested near the base, by personnel under the base’s control. Mark it on the map. Open to some INTER-FACTION CONFLICT.
• Food must be imported from far away, or is provided by persons not under the base’s control (through trade, for example). Open to INTER-FACTION CONFLICT. 
• Silly, this magical faction has no need of food.

How do they handle their BODILY WASTES?

• They don’t. Waste is strewn willy-nilly throughout the base. The whole place is a reeking cesspool and likely a disease haven. 
• Ye olde chamberpots. Bodily wastes are carried in small batches and dumped. Dump sites may be spread across a zone (like at the bottom of perimeter walls and beneath windows) or in a specific designated cesspit. Mark these spots on the map and describe them appropriately when PCs move nearby. 
• Ah, toilets. There are designated latrines. Where does the outflow end up? If it stays in one spot, how soon will it fill up? 
• Question: does the location for bodily waste removal affect the clean water supply, or not?
• Special option: historically, some communities transferred their own bodily wastes into fertilizer. Does this group do so? Where is it processed? 
• Fantasy waste engineering. Perhaps the faction controls a waste-consuming device (sphere of annihilation) or creature (otyugh, ooze) that helps eradicate waste over time. 
• Silly, this magical faction produces no bodily wastes. 

How do they handle their NON-BODILY WASTES?

• See all the options already listed for bodily wastes for possible reference. 
• The faction continually dumps into a trash midden. Mark it on the map. If it is outside the base perimeter, there is potential for INTER-FACTION CONFLICT.

What are their LIGHT SOURCES?

• Perhaps this faction has no need of light. Be afraid. 
• They rely on natural ambient light from outside, at least in daytime. Mark the openings on the map; these could allow ingress. 
• They have magical illumination methods.
• They burn fuel for light: oil in lamps, torches, logs in braziers. If they burn stuff inside, and you feel like being realistic and nasty, think about ventilation and air quality, smoke obscuring vision, and the risk of fire spreading. 

How do they get IN/OUT?

• There’s only one way in and out. Mark it on the map. Is the entrance concealed? 
• There are several ways in and out. Mark them on the map. Are any concealed? 
• There are several ways in and out, but the faction running the base doesn’t know about all of them. Mark them on the map. Now, this is getting interesting. 
• Don’t forget that water sources, light sources, and air sources may provide additional portals.
• Speaking of portals, maybe there’s a magical way in or out. Mark it on the map and make up something weird about it.

What are their SECURITY MEASURES?

I recommend combining these options with a fixed Order of Battle for the faction. 

• Sentries are posted at known entrances, and perhaps at key internal chokepoints or sensitive areas. Mark/key them on your map. 
• Alternately, perhaps security is poor. Minor entrances are minimally guarded or unguarded. Doors are locked but not staffed. Etc. 
• Roving patrols. Put them in a random encounter table, or mark their routes on the map. 
• Think about which areas are under visual or other surveillance. Mark them as needed. 
• Who provides security? Does the base’s faction leader have definite control over them, or are there outsiders or insider power struggles at play? Major opportunity here for INTER-FACTION CONFLICT. 
• In the event of trouble, where will personnel go? Is there a fall-back point established, or a secondary line of defense? Do some residents head for emergency shelters? What would it take to provoke a full evacuation? 

(How) do they MAKE OR REPAIR TOOLS AND WEAPONS? 

• They don’t, at least centrally. Each faction member fends for themselves with DIY repairs as needed. 
• They have an armory, forge, workshop, and/or similar centers. Mark them on the map. But what about raw materials?
• Necessary raw materials are mined/harvested/whatever on the base. Mark where. 
• Finished goods, or raw materials for the faction’s use, must be shipped in from outside. Lots of potential here for INTER-FACTION CONFLICT. 

(How) do they address RELIGIOUS or SPIRITUAL concerns?

• They don’t.
• Their practice is highly individualized, and/or does not fundamentally affect the base’s spatial organization.
• They frequent one or more cultic centers (mark them on the map). What happens here, and how often? Examples might include prayer-council chambers, sacrificial wells, meditation chapels, etc. Do these practices require a supply chain, or affect other FACTIONS?
• Their beliefs/practices have a significant effect on spatial or social organization. Perhaps entire areas of the base are subject to unexpected taboos or rituals; perhaps traffic patterns across the base are constrained by ritual needs (example: to cross the central plaza with the statue of Ol’Thakob, they must crawl on their bellies…so maybe they tend not to cross it. Or maybe they cross it ten times a day). Perhaps different areas of the base are more or less crowded at different times of day/night. 

Some other things to consider:

• What do they do for entertainment, and where?
• What do they consider luxuries, and (how) do they access them? Who controls that access?