The Memory of the Meatgrinder

My colleague, Warren at ICastLight, posited that we can embed short-term memory into tables like your encounter table to create a more dynamic or interesting engine for exploration.

Example of an encounter table with "RAM"

So, in his example, each time you roll a "dungeon event", you put a checkmark next to the box. Once it's been rolled three times, there's a cave in. 

It occurred to me that the Meatgrinder in His Majesty the Worm already has some in-built short-term memory just by virtue of the random encounter being card based instead of dice based. In the normal flow of game, unless there's a combat (in which case a reshuffle is very likely), you won't get the same random encounter on the Meatgrinder in an evening because the card that triggered it is in the discard pile.

By default, His Majesty the Worm plays with the inherent short-term memory of cards only a little. This post imagines some subsystems that could exploit that feature more.

The Creeping Dark

Here's a variant rule proposed by the folks on the Worm Discord server: When a Meatgrinder (random encounter) event is ticked off, it is replaced with "Torches gutter." The longer you spend in the Underworld, the more the darkness closes in around you. Soon, you won't be able to take a step without your candles going out.

Ranger's Wisdom

Riffing on Warren's idea of a single event having a clock, a ranger might have a class feature that adds a checkbox to monster encounters. The first time they encounter a monster, they don't - they discover its spore. Then, the party has a heads up that a monster of that type is lurking on this floor of the dungeon.

This class feature may be tied to their level. At level 1, they get one checkbox for one monster encounter. As they level up, more and more encounters have buffers. 

Ranger's Wisdom, card redux

Obviously the last idea wasn't thinking about cards, I just liked it. Here's one that thinks about card tech a bit more.

When the ranger uses the Range action, they can take a look at the top card (or top 3?) of the Meatgrinder. If they pull a random encounter card, they are shown a spore that tells them what the type of monster they will eventually encounter. 

The ranger can spend a Resolve to put the card onto the bottom of the deck instead of the top. They take a careful path around the sphinx. They're not ready to fight it, yet.

Discard as a value

Mechanics can be tied to the number of discarded cards in the major arcana discard pile: the more Meatgrinder events that have happened, the higher the number. It's a clock that counts up throughout the game.

For example, in a zombie horror movie game, whenever you make a loud noise, [discard] zombies show up. At the beginning of the evening, this will be one or two zombies. By the end of the evening, you could have significant hoards descending. 

Because the GM shuffles their discard pile back into their deck when they run out of cards, the game has a natural swing between "easy" and "hard." Also, in such a game, you could have player abilities that oblige the GM to shuffle cards from the discard to the bottom of the deck, or trigger shuffles.

Discard as a clock

You could have significant events happen at certain intervals based on how many cards you have discarded. Once 5 cards are discarded, the lights in the dungeon go out and players have to rely on torches. Once 15 cards are discarded, zombies encounters are upgraded to skeleton encounters. If the GM runs out of cards, the ritual is complete and Zog takes over the multiverse. 

---

Anyway, I think the idea of encoding memory into game procedures with cards to be a rich vein to tap.  These are just a few ideas I had resting on the top of my brain. If this triggers some good ideas for you, why not blog about them?