wayfinding, zero dice infinite worlds

Three small paragraphs in the rule set describe the power of Wayfinding for a Warden of the Stair.

Wayfinding. Wardens have an instinctual understanding of where a mundane door leads, or where one of the Doors of the Grand Stair opens to. This ability is like an internal compass, leading the character in a needed or desired direction. It can be countered through some of the disciplines used by Masters of the Grand Stair.

Wayfinding can be used in the Gossamer worlds, Domains, and within the Grand Stair’s entire span (though there are parts of the Grand Stair where it is possible to get lost, even with this ability).

With the Wayfinding ability, a Warden can find a specific place within the Gossamer worlds if the Warden has some idea about the nature of the place or even one specific part of it. Additionally, the Warden can find an ideal Gossamer world that suits a particular criteria, no matter how idiosyncratic that criteria may be. If the Gossamer world has Doors, the Grand Stair can open into it, and a Warden can find the way there.

This is much more powerful than shadow walking from the Amber Diceless, IMHO. However, Doors are the limiting filter. While Corwin can find a deserted tropical island paradise with plenty of food and water and rest up, a Warden can only find such a place with a working door, indicating past construction and people, that may now be gone.

Some references to shadow walking in ADRPG are here and here (Rule of Three).

Note explicitly the rules allow the Warden to find specific places inside the Gossamer world if they have information about the place they are searching for. (Whereas, sometimes returning to a specific place with shadow walking is problematic.) Wayfinding gives you a compass sense inside the world.

This is a very powerful narrative changing device. Examples follow, “GM I’d like to walk to a Door….”

  • where the #1 bestseller is “Understanding and Working With Mnemon For Dummies”
  • where the ubiquitous nanites in the air will interface with my mind and explain how to fully control my Dragon Powers!
  • where there is a huge waterfall
  • where I can find the person trying to kill the Dragon Empress


IMC, the first three examples are legit and the fourth fails. The first three exist somewhere, if not in the gossamer you are within. The fourth example imagines an indeterminate future where you will find some copy of a person from a specific set of events in a specific gossamer that has not happened yet. That does not work.

Why? Because of the Rule of Three. Because you have to imagine a baseline of three qualities to your search. Test each example above.

  • You have met Mnemon so you can picture her, her world, and what sort of personality mystery she represents. You shall find something on the Stair.
  • You know about Dragon Powers so you can imagine the Dragons, the nature of the powers, and what sort brain changes may be needed (such as neural pathways, rote practice, and additional sensory learning). You shall find something on the Stair.
  • You’ve seen waterfalls, you’ve seen mountains, and you expect they have common patterns of gravity.

How long does the search take? Well, again, ask the PC what three filters are they applying to the search and rank them. Is the huge waterfall…

  • huge, waterfall, near to me
  • waterfall, huge, safe
  • near to me, waterfall, huge
  • waterfall, huge, fresh water

The Warden is juggling these factors, putting their own ‘spin’ on the culture/experience bias and seeking within Infinity. Something will come up, but how useful it is (IMHO) would be GM finesse. Certainly, the GM is allowed to ask a few clarifying questions of the three values chosen.

And, if the PC has high Psyche, and/or Good Stuff, this will affect the ease with which the destination is revealed.

Does this mean Wardens of low Psyche cannot find complicated things? No. It does mean there is a baseline of expertise given with the Warden attunement. So start with the Rule of Three. If the Warden is very experienced (certain region of the Stair is written into the PC background, or some years walking the Stair), the GM can help out a bit with easy answers. If the Warden has bad stuff, even the baseline three things may show adverse complications along the way. If the Warden has high Psyche, you can add some qualifiers to the Rule, ask for four things, or ask the PC if they wish to avoid seeking something that is already controlled or owned by someone powerful.

Let’s return for a moment to the ‘indeterminate example’. A murder. Can you solve mysteries with the Wayfinding power? I would say yes, only if you bring puzzle pieces together and seek the missing bits.

So the Empress has been assassinated, but no one can figure out who did it. The Warden seeks to find the person responsible for a determinate event that has happened.

The Warden knows, where it happened, how the victim died, perhaps knows the murder weapon. This would count as three things to narrow a search for the murderer, understanding that the assassin might know all about Warden powers, and have left bad clues to send you on a wild goose chase! Let’s say…

  • the Empress did not die in that room, she was moved there
  • the weapon found is not the murder weapon
  • the body found is not the Empress

You can see how some mysteries will work much like other detective fiction, ie, disproving assumptions and finding the real evidence to trust.

Search times: consider the more rare or specific your search, the longer it takes for you to find what you seek. “GM, I’m going to look for a custom armor that fits me, it is invulnerable to damage, it is currently sitting in a broken abandoned castle without guards.”  You’ll get a compass response, a direction, but it may take you a year to get to the gossamer world where this thing exists. And Wayfinding rules as written does not tell you how long to find the thing you seek.

The wilder your imagination, the longer you may be looking. Or not? Perhaps the PC’s wit will provide an interesting adventure?

So, rather than waste story time chasing stuff in the Infinite Stair, I shall tell the PC, yes, you sense the direction, it is very far away. Are you going after it?

Talk to your GM in session zero before the game starts about the baseline of such powers in play.

exegesis, furthermore!

LoGaSOne of the tiny rule comments about exegesis is, you have to use the Door of a Gossamer world to tune into the languages there.

I think that logic fails for two reasons.

First, if you’ve never visited Vulcan, and you meet a Vulcan on the Stair, you don’t know what he’s saying even if you are both Wardens, as it is unlikely both Wardens have used the Door to Vulcan. I don’t think that is intended. Worse, if neither of you arrive back on Vulcan by Door (for whatever odd reason) you still can’t understand each other.

Secondly, imagine a thousand languages being spoken in the Stair. But wait, there are merchants and cargo handlers and all sorts who don’t have Warden skills. And if your Warden hasen’t been to their Door, you can’t give them instructions? Even worse, your labor help may not be able to talk to each other. And there are plenty of game stories where not everyone (or every PC) has exegesis. You may have a PC based only on sorcery or Eidolon, so the Warden has to do the translations.

I suggest a small fix that meets the intention of the rule set.

The rule is better if you just say:

Once attuned to the Grand Stair, ie, Warden, you understand any language that exists paired to a functioning Door— or in a polycultural gossamer, all native languages of that world.

A particular GM could wrinkle this by saying the further you are from the transmitting Door source, the less likely the translation works. The key to that particular complication would be narrative emphasis (mostly mine) that the Infinite Stair is very very big and you can run across people that are so far out of your region of Stair you cannot talk to them— or not talk to them well.

Kill all doors to a gossamer language source and the understanding vanishes, as it is no longer transmitted to all Wardens. Destroy a world and the language is gone as well.

If a language vanishes, someone needs to go find out what is going on!


the greatest power of them all, exegesis!

LoGaSOne of the smallest power costs (10 pts) is Warden of the Stair. And tucked into the many abilities of the Warden of the Stair is exegesis, the ability to understand anyone within a gossamer world if you have entered the world through the Door.

You can also buy exegesis as a seperate power, see the Long Walk rule book for various power breakdowns.

Exegesis is amazingly powerful, worth the 10pts all by itself, and presents a range of narrative texture decisions for the GM to explain to players. I have to recommend GMs encourage all Players to get the power exegesis whether in the Warden package or through spending separate points. I’ll note some things here (and thanks to the LoGaS group on FaceBook for the content copy):

Does Exegesis convey meanings of words that are technical? For instance, if a character says “aortic aneurysm”, “capitalism”, “specular reflection”, or “Umbra”, would the meaning of the word or term be conveyed?

A practical way to look at exegesis (GM side if you will) is that cultural meaning is conveyed. As long as the your own culture has an equivalent for what the other person is saying, you get a meaning.

But if their world doesn’t have magic, there may be no word for it for them to get.

Two Wardens speaking together may easily overcome this effect, but Warden speaking to Fred Flintstone may have to keep the conversation basic.

Exegesis includes the meaning, but in extreme cases, you may not be passing the meaning you THINK you are. If the Warden says, “We’ve a solution to your problem but it will involve calling up Umbra.”  The native speaker may hear, “We’ve brought an answer. We will pray to the Gods and get help from Pan.”

If that’s the gist of the conversation (maybe there is an immediate lack of time to make detailed response) I don’t think the GM needs to explain anything more. And if results later are complicated by the fact the natives think you are a priest of Pan, well there you are.

So at a finer level of conversation, is “Umbra” just “force of entropy”? Is the pervasiveness and universality of concept conveyed? Can you convey to natives that your team represents “Eidolon” so you can trust us?

No, I don’t think so. I think the GM can make a short list of trans-Infinite culture terms if she/he likes, but I doubt Umbra/Eidolon/Sorcery/Invocation are on that list. I’d rule the powers in the rules are not often ‘commonly known’.

If you say, ‘I have magic!’ or ‘I will solve it with science!’, you’ll mostly be on safe ground for the common language. And this quite depends on the gossamer world where you are standing. In Shatterlight, the Grand Stair is a more commonly known abstraction and discussions about esoteric matters are more commonly understood.


the blog with the INTP

INTP – The Thinkers

The author of https://intheshadowofgreatness.wordpress.com/ is of the type INTP.


They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Their ability to grasp complexity may also lead them to provide overly detailed explanations of simple ideas, and listeners may judge that the INTP makes things more difficult than they need to be. To the INTPs’ mind, they are presenting all the relevant information or trying to crystallize the concept as clearly as possible.

GM responsibility and extending the rules

In a post from last year, I offered this:



[edits follow, thanks to comments by Kit Kindred]



The example is spurious, and not terribly serious:










convention-al gaming meme


House of Justice and Doom
House of Intrigue and Foxes
House of Midnight and Fire
To Gran Ma Mare’s House we go…
Changing Hands
The Pendrad
House of Shroudlings: a Farewell to Spikards
House of Daring and Laughter
The Black Watch Must Die!
StairWay Perilous!
The Dead Tell ‘Know Tales’
When you have Illuminated the Impossible
Empire of the Gleaming Banner
Bloody Grievance
Five Sides to Every Story
Agents of the Argent Rose
Clandestine Chronicles of the Cobalt Charter
The Soft Cimmerian



Brothers, Sisters, may the Force be With Them…





So any thoughts readers?



Forgotten times (?), many

Ancient era (3), Benedict, Osric, Finndo




Do you ever involve the Forgotten?



Forgotten times (?), many

Ancient era (2), Nanna, ShaRa







Again, do you ever involve the Forgotten?