pyrrhic weaselry wrap-up

Art by Kilian Eng

First of all, this post will have very little meaning to those who haven't been following the past series of posts, where I broke down my new system, its resolution system, combat mechanics and character creation. If you're curious, I'd highly recommend them to anyone who's interested in a game system which places as much emphasis as possible on treating the fiction and story like real, physical places with weight and substance and getting as many non-diegetic elements out of the way as possible. To everyone else, I'm sorry you've had to put up with this for the past weeks, and I'll be putting out some other content in the near future (dungeon generator woo).

Second, I finally settled on a name for the system with some help from the good people at the OSR discord! Or rather, I got two names so good I couldn't choose between them and just squished them together. Either way, the point is that this system is called:

Pyrrhic Weaselry,

or 

At What Cost?

I like this name for a few reasons: the "Pyrrhic" part speaks to the compromises necessary to attain victory, "Weaselry" is just fun to say and references the desperate weaseling the players must do in order to escape dire consequences, and the two words together conjure an image of a weasel in a little greek helmet, which is delightful. The "At What Cost" part of the name is clear, a bit more serious, and to the point, asking the players what they are willing to sacrifice through compromise in order to achieve their goals. Finally, smashing the two titles together gives the entire thing a fun, slightly antiquated theatrical sort of a feel, like you're about to watch a greek tragedy involving weasels trying and failing to live beyond their means, which suits me perfectly. 

Third, I've assembled the rules to Pyrrhic Weaselry into a google doc which I will link here. 

(Plus, I even added a brand new Path, Path of the Oath,  inspired by work by Shoe Skogen, none other than the Crown Captain of the OSR!)

Having all the rules in one place like this should make actually using the ruleset a lot more feasible. 

Fourth, I've created an automated character generator (using the default tables provided in the base ruleset) which will provide you with your characters Traits and Motifs. That means all you need to do is choose your Training and Path, and you're ready to start playing!

Fifth, I'm just gonna drop links to Gonorich of Whimsical Mountain's session writeups of a game he's running using this system: he offers some valid criticism and hacks the rules in some interesting ways.
I haven't been doing session write ups of my home game using this system (though I may start) so if you're curious about what another party's experience was, go take a look.


Sixth, I figured I'd take some time and address some questions I've been asked on reddit and the OSR discord channel, as well as providing some advice for running the game.

The main questions I've gotten revolve around handling danger in the game while taking into account the compromise mechanic, and how combat actually plays out.

The questions about handling danger tend to revolve around how to set up challenges that players can feasibly offer compromises to.

My advice for that simply comes down to this: learn to think in extremes. Present the players with what the absolute worst case scenario is at this given moment. Let them know that if they fall off the bridge, their bones will splinter on the rocks. Let them know that if this poison gets to their heart, they will be slaves to the hag forever. Let them know that if the ogre's punch lands, their face will be a thing existing only in memories of a happier, less painful time. Then, press pause, and ask them "what do you do?" Can they offer a compromise? Can they find a way out of this? And if they can, at what cost? Or, on the other hand, will they grab the dice, offer up a prayer, and let it ride?

Actually, when it comes down to it, my model for action in this game is largely inspired by Into the Breach, a brilliant little mech strategy game where you begin each turn knowing exactly what your opponent will do, and must puzzle out how to best mitigate the damage that will be done. The other big inspiration for this combat system was John Wick, so you know. If you don't care for one, maybe you'll like the other.

My advice regarding combat is as follows: make sure your players are specific. Ask them where they are targeting, how they are swinging, etc. But more than that, really get into enemy attack descriptions. Lavish the description of the orc's overhead sword swing with detail, and eventually, your players will start to do the same for their own strikes.

"But doesn't that slow down combat?" Honestly, no. The system is light (read, nonexistent) enough that things move along at a nice clip, and with the emphasis on realism and specificity, most foes will only offer 1 or 2 compromises before they incur wounds that would make them want to flee.

One last piece of advice that just popped into my head: have copies of the players character sheets, or at the very least jot down each character's Traits in your notes, so that you don't always have to ask what someone's relevant Trait's are before setting the difficulty of a task.


I'm sure there's more to say, but for the life of me I can't think of it right now. If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to leave a comment. For now, I'd just like to say thank you reading this far, I hope you've liked what you've seen, or if not, that at least you got some gratification out of scoffing at it. I'll be back soon with a dungeon generation system and a sample dungeon that I created using it. Cheers!