Game Philosophy

The first of these game philosophies, is that Nyra is built to be quite brutal in its nature. When the health calculations of player characters are considered in relation to even the damage of a weapon like a short sword, it can be seen that a fluke high-damage strike to the head with this weapon, generally considered to be an early game trash item, can conceivably kill a player in one to two hits. 

This is because the game, in many ways, has been written to be “balanced by realism.” This is not to say that characters will not achieve unrealistic feats of strength and acuity at some point, nor that every aspect of realism could be represented in its completeness, but we have endeavored to build a foundation which rewards and punishes people in measure to real life consequences. When this has been restrictive to represent with mechanics and would require too much complexity or book-keeping to model, we have fallen back on simplified versions of what we believe “real life’s balancing” to be.

Our hope is that this design philosophy will encourage roleplaying, not because players consciously choose to play a character, but instead because they will be charged with keeping them alive in an unforgiving world. When their character’s life is on the line, players tend to make more measured and wise decisions. If they do not, they will be rolling a new character very soon. After all, in Nyra there are no resurrection spells and health regeneration is slow. When a player’s character dies, they are dead forever. And with the previous considerations in place, just by applying the rules as they are written, player deaths will be common. The players should realize very quickly that they are not able to play the unencumbered and carefree fantasy adventurer, pillaging dragon tombs and saving villages for the majority of their character’s lifetime. Nyra is an oppressive and insidious world that will relish their deaths.

With all of this in mind, a GM may encounter situations where the players feel that they are being treated unfairly or the mechanics are too unforgiving. Rest assured, there are manifold avenues for characters to become powerful in the game. After all, the combat mechanics are not only written brutally against the players, but for them. Through the many avenues of advancement, the players can become legendary warriors, supremely powerful mages, and master manipulators of minds. When they have reached this point, what will hopefully bring them satisfaction is that others died along the perilous journey that led to their ascension and these numerous brushes with death will be contrasted against their new dominance.

As a general rule, it is safe to be fair but stern as a GM. Players should be rewarded for being wise, but they should also be punished for being foolish. Think of what a consequence to a haughty act is in real life and attempt to model it in response to the player. Most of the time, the game will tend to balance itself out when this is done. 

Let’s use an example. In Nyra, intimidate is a very powerful charisma skill. In practice, just by its description, it should be quite versatile in getting a player what they want, although they will have to use the threat of violence or repercussion to exact that cost. And its drawbacks are its real life consequences. Failure usually means confrontation. And when confrontation can lead to death, the player should fear what might happen if they anger the wrong NPC. Those who make lives of intimidating everyone to get what they want, will eventually meet a bigger fish.

It is also important that the GM understand the value and appropriate occurrence of player deaths. Although a GM should not make it their single-minded focus to kill the players (after all, the GM can achieve this at any point they desire, what’s the fun in that?), they should also not shy away from death as a looming consequence. Not only does death add stakes to the game, forcing players to adjust their approach with a sober understanding of the consequences, but it also allows the story to progress, churning out previous characters and replacing them with new ones who can take the narrative in new directions.

It should also be said, given that Nyra is dark fantasy, that there has been no attempt to whitewash the serious ethnic and cultural strife that exists. In the absence of broad education and with limited and tumultuous cultural inter-mixing, bigotry is a real force on this planet. And, although this may seem an unfortunate feature of the game-world, it is just one of many stressors present in the game that are meant to push players to roleplay their characters. When players know that they may be discriminated against in certain regions or by specific characters, it presents in-game barriers to overcome which invites diverse problem solving and character development. Below can be found a table which roughly outlines the trends in these bigotries, although they can vary by region, city, and individual.

General Trends in Inter-Species Bigotry

0: Neutral or unaware

1: Resentment or fear

2: Dislike

3: Contempt

4: Beliefs about inherent inferiority

5: Pure hatred

Bigotries between the species are not the only sort, either. It is both within the interests of many power structures and within the nature of the poor and impoverished, to promote fear and hatred of mages. To the powerful, mages often represent untamed and unsuppressable power, something they would rather seen decimated than harnessed. To the average peasant, they represent an unequal playing field, an arcane representation of the horror of the world and their inability to overcome its cruelty. While they till the fields, mages could come in and upend months of work in a few moments. Many will tend to view mages as forces of chaos and have little or no understanding of the differences between the elements, their philosophies, or the perspectives of their various adherents. Only orderists have broad acceptance, representing the negation of magic and therefore bringing safety and stability to those populaces. Below can be seen a table which outlines general trends of bigotry for each element by the different species.

General Trends in Anti-Mage Bigotry

0: Neutral or unaware

1: Slight feelings of resentment or fear

2: Open dislike

3: Contempt

4: Beliefs about inherent inferiority

5: Pure and unadulterated hatred

House Rules and Running a Beginner’s Campaign

Nyra, by the standards of many other tabletop games, is relatively rule dense. This can make it difficult to learn at first and therefore there may be some distress that it will be difficult to implement. However, it is not required that Nyra be run with every tiny detail to be both playable and enjoyable. We will lay out some features which must be included for Nyra to function and some others that can be safely excluded while maintaining functionality in the following section.

First, Nyra must be run with d10 roll-under system intact and skill point sheet to calculate the cost of skills. But, for example, the mechanisms for skill point gain could be constrained by the GM to a beginning of each game stipend or arbitrary reward for achieved tasks. Although the generation of skill points from critical successes and critical failures is an integral part of Nyra and one of its unique aspects, it does not have to be included to run the game. Also, even though the skill point yields for each creature slain are listed in 98b. Creatures, it is up to the GM how they wish to divvy these out. Although it is suggested that GMs reward the points listed of all the creatures to each player who entered combat, some GMs may choose to just give the skill points to the player who landed the last hit and still others may choose to split them evenly between the players that affected the creature. Each of these decisions will create certain incentives and disincentives for the players and will therefore encourage and discourage different behaviors because of it.

Similarly, the combat system must be run with competitive rolling and the dodge and defense systems in place in order for combat to not lead to repeated and unnecessary death. But it is not necessary that a GM run the game with traits on player weapons. Nor does the GM have to run the professions in order for the group’s ecosystem to function passably. The services offered by these skills could be parsed out by NPCs if chosen, although this would be far more expensive.

It may be a decent starting place for a new GM to begin with characters who do not have access to skill perks, feats, weapon traits, professions, Mage classes, or even Savants. Each of these exclusions may be reasonable house rules for beginners of the game, given how much complexity they will remove while still maintaining the base rule system. Therefore a GM should take on each as they feel appropriate so that they do not feel burdened. The GM may even find that implementing each feature piece by piece as the characters progress will be a satisfying reward for the players, who now have new material to explore and improve within. Starting players with access to only the vanilla weapons would still be a considerable list to explore and may be sufficient to entertain the players for several games before the GM decides to start introducing professions and traits.

That being said, the game has been extensively balanced with all of these aspects in place. For players to get a complete experience of Nyra, it is highly advised that GMs and players work toward implementing all of the rules included in this guide. Not only will they lead to a more rich and complex world, but also a more enjoyable and robust gaming environment with far higher horizons for player development and GM engagement.

Another aspect that should be mentioned is, especially given the previous note that Nyra contains manifold ethnic and cultural strifes, this aspect may be understandably triggering for certain players. Although Nyra will certainly be a more peculiar world to play without these components in place, GMs should always feel free to alter the lore to fit the desired tone that they wish for their campaign. Nyra has a deeply crafted backstory, but it is first and foremost, a rule system. Play Nyra in the way that brings you and the players the most enjoyment. It is your experience, not ours. We have merely given you a platform to tell your story.

Secret GM Knowledge

The Court of Stone Owls rules the Kaze in secret, a cult of knowledge worshipers who see themselves as the rightful Philosopher Kings of the planet.

Vampires are running a conspiracy behind the human empire, focused mostly in Gadna, Byra, and Farhaven.

On Onus there is a secret society of Ponderan who have survived the massacre, and are masterminding many of the events on the other continents unbeknownst to their leadership.