I try to design player-first games, games whose core design structure fosters collaborative gameplay, out-of-the-box thinking, fun, and emergent narrative. I know that in an OSR, or post-OSR, fashion, emergent narrative is often focused on solving problems. Instead, what I mean by it is building relationships with the world, negotiating with the environment, and optionally being able to overcome adversities through collaboration and the creative expression of the character’s abilities. The difference might seem minimal, but it’s not.

That is the core design goal of most of the games I work on. Specific design choices are made informed by it. Especially when it comes to antagonists, I try to design them as more than just problems to get rid of, but rather as new members of the cast that players have to deal with.

In The Lost Bay RPG, the Bosses-like NPCs, the final-level baddies, called Miracles are not characters players can deal with easily. As a matter of fact, they can’t really be defeated; they seldom can be killed. Additionally, some Miracles aren’t frontally adversarial; they’re just dangerous because they overpower playable characters. I like to call them Anti-Bosses. It’s a strong design pattern that all Miracles follow.

This fundamental assumption moves direct combat out of the way as a primary strategy for dealing with them. Instead, players have no choice but to share their resources and think creatively, going beyond the mechanical abilities written on their character sheets. This key difference puts characters, and their relationships, at the core of the gameplay experience.

Here’s an in-depth description of how TLB Miracles are structured and work.

Miracles are The Lost Bay supernatural, Weird, antagonists. Most of them are unique. There’s only one Bone King, one Traveller, one Storm. Confronting them in direct combat results inevitably in death. TLB Miracles are not too dissimilar from classical fairy tale monsters like Little Thumb’s Ogre. They also draw inspiration from Trophy Dark monsters (who can’t be killed), or Mythic Bastionland monsters (which are unique creatures). The book contains twelve of them.

Miracles are dark, living gems at the heart of Urban Legends. Overwhelming and powerful, avid death-bringers. They remain beyond understanding even when they have a human form. Manipulative liars, shapeless murderers, or brutal destroyers. Pray, pray to your Living Saint to never meet one of them.

But, if the higher powers are too distracted to hear your plea, and like so many unlucky souls you cross paths with one of them, do not confront it because, no matter what you do, it will crush you, bones, blood, and soul.

Instead, be cunning.

Miracles are overwhelming creatures. They’re either offspring of the Faceless God, sent to the Bay to lay the foundation for its coming, or victims of the Faceless God, who bear in their body and soul the mark of its suffocating hold. They’re tormented beings who cast misery around them. Many will try to brutally destroy whoever comes close enough, while others just want to toy with their victims. Miracles are known to shed loss and ruin as they move through the Bay, driven to consume bodies or souls for their sustenance.

Miracles might have a human form like the Hollow Hitchhiker, or a small size like the Death Kiss parasite, or be staggering god-like figures like The Traveller. In any case, they overpower the characters.

When players cross paths with a Miracle, make the encounter memorable. Miracles are not just monsters: they become, with the characters, key members of the story’s cast, at least for a while.

Confronting a Miracle in direct combat results in immediate death. Though players can find ways to imprison, stun, cheat, and hide from them. Clever and lucky PCs can strike deals with Miracles. In exceptional circumstances players might even manage to defeat and kill them, luring them to the edge of a high cliff, crushing them under an industrial hydraulic press, or having a nuclear payload detonate right next to them. Gifts (supernatural abilities) and Summons (invocations of immortal beings) may have an effect on miracles, as soon as they’re not used to inflict direct physical damage.

It’s up to the GM to find the right balance between communicating a sense of dread and letting players feel in charge. The GM might arbitrate that a defeated Miracle bounces back, and reappears later, with an altered form and maybe different goals.

Examples of Physical Confrontations with Miracles

DON’T: The PCs manage to surprise the Bone King and stab him in the heart. He drools black blood, laughs, and mutters, ‘I have no heart,’ before using his Drown move to bury the PCs in mud.

DO: A PC strikes a deal with the Bone King and is granted the gift to rot flesh. The PC uses it to rot what’s left of the King’s muscles. The Miracle falls to his knees, now nothing more than a skeleton with lumps of flesh. The PC takes advantage of the King’s weakened state to flee.

DON’T: The PCs run over Storm with their truck. She takes the blow and careens off the side of the road. As she gets back on her feet, she turns into a sandstorm and enters the vehicle through its air vents.

DO: The PCs are in a bar fight with Storm, who is after the ancient bone comb they possess. She turns into a sandstorm inside the pub. The PCs use the comb to lure her into a walk-in freezer and lock the door.

Example Miracle

Mold Man

A failed Noble Rock experiment. Naked, erratic, and oddly graceful. Loves to dance, speaks in cryptic nonsense, and vomits clouds of infectious spores. A bit sad. Lives in the water reservoir. Occasionally takes a walk in the nearby area, always at night.

Weakness: Connected to the mold and can’t leave the reservoir for long. Dies if the mold is destroyed entirely.

Mood: “Do you want to eat the moon fruit?” Squints and squeaks.

Wants: A quiet life.

Moves:

• Cough infectious spores
• Blink big kind eyes
• Hide in water
• Crawl on reservoir walls
• Spread mold through touch

Quirk: Body is partly consumed by mold.

Gear: Roll three items on the Stuff table. These were dropped by or taken from folks who visited the area.

That’s Miracles in a nutshell: The Lost Bay’s baddies, anti-bosses, and antagonists. They contribute mechanically and thematically to forging a gameplay that blends OSR/NSR aspects with narrative gameplay, fostering collective play and out-of-the-box thinking.

Extending this stream of thought from game design to product design and publishing, the mechanics, and the implicit values they support, inform not only the gaming experience but also the entire relationship with the product itself. Or rather, they inform how the product-audience relationship could be built. This is still an open experiment for me; I’m discovering things as I try, read, and publish.

However, the intuition here, and the desire, is that moving away from combat-centric mechanics should be accompanied by a move away from cortisol-spike or FOMO-induced, aggressive-by-default marketing strategies and toward a more robust, meaningful, and fulfilling relationship with the audience. This can be done by creating games that, beyond the fun and hopefully “wow” factor, serve as the spark for strong, memorable, and shared human experiences.

That’s the plan!