XII: Inner Demons (Part 2)

Volumetic Shit Compressor (12 days internalization)

This is the conclusion to the critical analysis of XII: Inner Demons. You can find the first part here.

5. Disassemble Engine

Games have a flow, which when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.

Ludo

The main engine of XII is anxiety, represented by 12 days of actions, each broken into four time slots and a moment for sleep and rest between days. 48 time slots to investigation the locations of the Seals, arm yourself with relics and magic items, face Greater Demons and eventually destroy the Seals. If all fails, you still have the last 4 slots as the Archdemon arrives and it cannot be stopped; what will you do in the last hours of life?

The engine needs additional support to do this; the decision-making when you have such a limited time can be severely restricting. The thrusters for direction come in the form of Fear Tests; whenever there is considerable danger, you face a terrifying foe or confront your traumas, you may be asked to a Fear Test. There are always good: they mean you are doing something right and always give you resources: humans get stronger by beating Fear Tests, while demons grow in power as their bond humans give in to their weakness.

Fear Tests are able to nudge in the pacing, and are the main tool a GM has to adjust the gears of the engine of the game. More Feat Tests, mean more resources, means characters will grow more powerful; this can easily push how players cut through time slots and enable you to keep maximum tension.

The engine has different cylinders, depending on the type of option you pick for your game, based on the groups main strategy to deal with the Archdemon. Each option changes the rules slightly, as it has a different framework for the twelve days of the game. The default assumption is that characters are going to look for clues about the seals and try to get them done as quickly as possible, in the Investigation Mode. Other three frameworks are trying to get as far as possible from the ritual as their problems chase them (Escape), fortify your position and fight waves of demons (Siege) or by facing your own traumas and inner demons and render yourself an invalid target for the ritual (Strife).

Brad

Lu’s excellent breakdown covers the engine, so I’m gonna focus on how much I adore the time-limit mechanic. Outside of XII I love setting a time limit on games, often flexible, but either way, I think it always creates a unique set of circumstances where players can put their characters through a ton of unique situations. XII does that as a simple matter of the play and is built so that your players have a ton of interaction with it.

Also, the Stress/Grip mechanic is such a clever piece of design! Stress/Grip is the hit point equivalent for humans and demons, and the thing that makes them cool is that when you roll higher than your current Stress/Grip total you get to add +1 to the total of your dice roll, it is easy for healthy people to do difficult actions, but when you know your life is on the line you can do better on average! It’s the opposite of wound penalties which is such an underutilized thing.

6. Essentials For Session One

So, you got this game, you going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, your have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to try to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the felling of what makes this game stand out from similar art.

Lucrécia

XII is surprisingly easy to get playing. You can get a quick survey of the system by looking into the following points:

• Basic rolling (pg. 10)

• Stress and Grit and how they change the capacity of characters (pg. 12)

• Fear Tests (pg. 14)

• Competences (pg. 26)

• Traumas (pg. 39)

• Demons (pg. 50) and Aspects (pg. 81)

Once you have read these rules, go with the default frame-up, Investigation (pg. 94). Then, play a couple of days where characters deal with the first seal. That should give you a nice overview of XII.

Brad

Read the Enemy Action chapter, just to have it as a thought, follow all of Lu’s advice, and give a thorough session zero, like you would with any sort of game facing a horror element; for the love of everything, make sure you understand the combat chapter.

7. Playing The Game Wrong

Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your time, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (our have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line in page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?

Ludo

Combat is probably the weakest part of XII. It is frenetic, intense, and based around clever use of Combat tokens. It needs some time to get used to, Initiative in particular. There are also small particular rules about how certain powers and competences interact that need to be considered. It is pretty enjoyable one you get a hang of it, but combat is not a desirable outcome most of the time; it takes some time for players to get used that they should be trying to accomplish more things than beating their enemies to a pulp. ¹

Acquisition of items is an easily missed rule, but should not be relevant for most games; money is really not how you are supposed to solve much stuff on XII after all.

While a good tool to adjust pacing, Fear Tests are the sole player-facing lever GMs have to interact with the game. It may take some time to get used to it, but over course of the twelve days of the first game most people should become skilled at predicting the effects of Fear Tests.

The Enemy Actions section is something that people taking only a brief look at the game may miss, and only may pay off after the first session; it is really criminal if one overlooks how much XII puts there and the many intriguing ways it uses Greater Demons and their machinations to make those twelve days truly nightmarish.

Brad

Combat is not the desired outcome of an attempt to break a seal, but at some point, your players are going to have to fight. I do like the combat engine, but it does require some system mastery to sing. As much as I gushed about it, I missed the Stress/Grip rule for a couple of rolls, so don’t miss that it’s cool. Fear Tests do require some rhythm, so carefully use them and focus on their consequences.

8. What to Steal

Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.

Lucrécia

Characters becoming better at things as they go lower in Stress/Grit is pretty fun and a neat reminder of how those are always a good way to adjust pacing and stakes. Mechanics like this that can be seeminglessly integrated are always a boon for design.

Having different frameworks that work with the same engine and premise that works this well is genuinely inspired; it is quite the feat and should be studied. Having frameworks so integrated with the rules and changing themselves in turn is challenging and requires some extensive game design work; XII manages it so well it ends up being four different games in one where rules learned from one game apply to the next.

Tabletop roleplaying game designers often limit themselves to transpose popular trends from other media into games, with little thought about how and what is so appealing on the original trend and how that would work on a tabletop roleplaying game. One such trend is roguelikes, with many roguelike inspired tabletop roleplaying games trying to transpose such games… ignoring the fact that so many of what is appealing in roguelikes is pretty much ubiquitious in this artform. XII has very valuable lessons to teach to designers that want to like their rogues a bit more, even if it is really not at all concerned or interested in being a roguelike.

Games of XII have a clock: 12 days. This means there is a limit to how long you can play. And this is a good thing. There is this implicit idea that you can keep playing a game forever, unless the game is especitly made for one-shots; the truth is games have lulls and they will drag out: I talk often of the 4-12 sessions half-life of PbtAs, and who ever plays 1 to 20 levels on that game? XII knows what it does well and for how long; you can only play for 12 days, and then you can make another game of XII. Now, if only there was a stand-alone second book where you could play 12 more days, like in a sequel…

Brad

Steal its forward-thinking on how long your game can run, and build it into the assumptions of the game, it is not a weakness to have a game that’s killer over a certain number of sessions and limit the players to enjoying that. Plus, you can have a campaign that is actually paced, which is a truthfully addictive sensation.

Be brave enough to play with HP and what it means for your game, and to style it into something that has a cool effect instead of being a feelbad meter.

I know I say it a lot, but you can tell XII doesn’t just have something to say, but that its creators were excited about these things, I know I say it a lot, but you can tell when love goes into a product, and XII is full of love. Steal that love of your art and you can’t be wrong.

1. Or not, some Lesser Demons can be true combat machines, and even humans with the right tools and competences. It just takes a bit of system mastery.