tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81871289425857130212024-03-15T04:41:02.845-04:00Dispatches From KickassistanDispatches From Kickassistan chronicles Adam Muszkiewicz's on-again, off-again relationship with roleplaying games and making content for them. Primarily focused on the Old School Renaissance (OSR) and New School Revolution (NSR) like DCC RPG and WARPLAND RPG and narrative games like Torchbearer and Blades in the Dark, Adam creates content for the games that he's currently playing. Adam publishes the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine for DCC RPG, where nothing is true, and everything is permitted.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger416125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-39584374852007655102023-11-20T12:02:00.001-05:002023-11-20T12:02:30.237-05:00The Tiamat Initiative - A New Source of Mutation for TMNTOS<p><i>Even before I learned about Palladium Books' TMNTOS reissue (on Kickstarter now), 2023 was shaping up to be another one of those years where my interest swings back around to TMNTOS from a simple discussion a few months back about RPG artists, and one whose work I've always enjoyed is Jim Lawson, who I know entirely for his work on TMNTOS. After some research, I discovered that Lawson was one of the key artists who took over penciling and inking duties from Eastman & Laird over time. That rabbit hole lead to me reading all of the TMNT Classics comics, finishing that up right about the time the KS launched. As I started toying with the idea of running TMNTOS again -- which I totally want to do, this game is one of my all-time favs -- I realized how dissatisfied I am with the whole "ooze" mutagen concept that's very present in the TMNT-osphere. I wanted something different for a game I was going to run, and I liked the idea of some 70's high concept sci-fi intruding on my 80's gritty action film RPG, and came up with the Tiamat Initiative.</i></p><p> "Imagine, Alfie, being able to reach back in time to that moment -- that <i>precise moment </i>-- when the first protein chains began to assemble themselves. Imagine witnessing the vast potentiality of all creation stretching out in front of you from that point in time into the future. Until today. Hell, until tomorrow. The day after. Now have the hubris to <i>change that moment</i> to <i>fit your design."</i> - Dr. Paul Saxon, Project Manager of the Tiamat Initiative</p><p>The Tiamat Initiative disappears from the financial statements of the Samsara Project in 1975. Its assets are not sold off, its staff never reassigned. The project simply disappears. There is no further record of it in any Samsara Project documents, not even the infamous "Bern Papers" or "Rimbaud Dossier." The closest any Samsara Project staff will get to acknowledging the Tiamat Initiative at all is to call it "irrelevant."</p><p>On August 25th, 1975, Dr. Paul Saxon and a crew of 13 scientists and 27 technicians crossed the irrelevancy threshold. In a vast effort that married the futurist ideologies of the Samsara Project to the most cutting-edge of theoretical physics and genetics, the Tiamat Initiative harnessed the multifurcation of a moment in time -- the exact moment of the beginning of that chain reaction known on Earth as "life" -- as that moment splintered off into an uncountable infinity of multiverses. "The true chaos of creation," Dr. Saxon opined, "is not in the complexity of the conditions that lead to Life [sic], but in the deluge that follows that moment."</p><p>The last records of communication with the Tiamat Initiative come at 11:42 AM. Local utility companies report a massive power surge at 11:42, followed by erratic transformer outages within one mile of the Initiative's lab. By the time the Samsara Initiative investigate the site, several hours after the cessation of contact, the premises are devoid of the researchers, their lab equipment or their research itself; just the building is left. </p><p>In her paper, "The Threshold of Irrelevance," Dr. K. Ideyemi posits that the moment time travel becomes a possibility, the notion of time as we understand it today is irrelevant. In her "radical investigation of the qualitative and quantitative properties of 'now,'" Dr. Ideyemi presents a theory of time that describes "now' as the bleeding edge of a chain reaction; it is the point at which the chain reaction is happening. As the chain reaction occurs, it excretes vast columns of spent potentiality we call "past;" the chain reaction was burning through potential possibilities at the rate of experience, effectively writing the past in the process. If one could "touch" an earlier instance of that chain reaction, once, twice, multiple times, Dr. Ideyemi theorized, if they could bring it into the <i>current now</i>, one might be able to rewrite any stage of that history, but here and now. </p><p>Dr. Saxon's intellectual contribution to Dr. Ideyemi's work was the application of wormhole technology. Dr. Saxon's pet project for decades at this point, Dr. Saxon's work had been stymied by the inability for his worm hole technology to affect actual time travel on its own. Saxon offered Ideyemi a partnership with funding from the Samsara Project and in early 1971, they christened their Tiamat Initiative after the Sumerian primordial chaos at the beginning of time, from which all life and form are constructed. On the cusp of success, Dr. Idemeyi was ejected from the project in November of 1974; nondisclosure agreements prevent her from speaking on the record about her time with the Initiative. </p><p>The influx of mutant animals in 1986 has been widely attributed by conspiracy theorists and independent investigators alike to a shadowy organization that they have named the Tiamat Initiative, though concrete proof of the continued existence of the Tiamat Initiative at all eludes even the most astute of investigators. These reports either conflict or report on a wide variety of activity. Some cases mention deliberate experimentation in a lab setting; others, accidental exposure to a substance (a colorless "sludge") is the direct antecedent to mutation while still others cite circumstantial encounters with "faults" in time. Your local junkyard manager, fringe survivalist or radical anticapitalist likely has heard at least some of these Un-American theories and will happily expound upon their personal take in order to reveal whatever details the GM needs the player characters to know. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-16250511222703562112023-08-29T10:00:00.015-04:002023-11-27T09:22:56.034-05:00Transylvania, Anno Domini 1818<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOU046n9TqhzWB0cIekcXLya643q_QHS7GRVt9Cp1ikcPzZO2-Ddz9YCVeWtuckhsBrvP1IgWQJ07uGXakb_knnjtbDidu0JJN-BVRZE0bRRyrXlC8R_qJ1aVZ4DW7veghBpf6EphiydC7_LmThuT22DJmu1qybJXjBOGd67ujKZRB-xyVUI6DsQUDkqU/s1600/Congress-of-Vienna-watercolour-etching-collection-Friedrich.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1264" data-original-width="1600" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOU046n9TqhzWB0cIekcXLya643q_QHS7GRVt9Cp1ikcPzZO2-Ddz9YCVeWtuckhsBrvP1IgWQJ07uGXakb_knnjtbDidu0JJN-BVRZE0bRRyrXlC8R_qJ1aVZ4DW7veghBpf6EphiydC7_LmThuT22DJmu1qybJXjBOGd67ujKZRB-xyVUI6DsQUDkqU/s320/Congress-of-Vienna-watercolour-etching-collection-Friedrich.webp" width="320" /></a></div><a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/08/the-transylvania-game-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank">In my last post</a>, I talked about the Transylvania game (still wanting for a name) that I plan on running in <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND</a>. I mentioned that the game will take place "in the Age of Napoleon," but that's pretty vague. Are we talking during the Napoleonic Consulate? The French Empire? The 100 Days? Well, the nice thing about Transylvania's remoteness from the front line of the Napoleonic Wars is that, for the most part, the only important dividing line is the Congress of Vienna because, after that, the Holy Roman Empire no longer exists. And Transylvania was tucked nicely into that corner of the HRE that is today called Hungary. After the Congress of Vienna, though the Holy Roman Empire no longer existed, the Hapsburg Empire of Austria did (literally the same group, just minus the "Holy Roman" name and clout). Other than a name change (and the corresponding loss of clout and move toward an ever-so-slightly more secular claim to power), life in Transylvania moved on as it had for generations, no matter how many Austrians and Prussians and French and English died fighting each other. <p></p><p><br />Which, of course, isn't entirely true. Someone had to actually do the fighting and dying, and the Hapsburgs proudly ruled over a multinational, multiethnic empire that drew fighting men from throughout its borders. In fact, the Hapsburgs routinely called up regiments of a specific ethnicity or nationality from their territory to occupy other parts of their territory; far better, say, to ensure the loyalty of the Croatians by installing Hungarian troops within Croat borders, than Croatian troops who would be sympathetic to the (potentially rebellious) local population. That Transylvanian soldiers featured among the dead in the fields of Austerlitz and Wagram is less a matter of conjecture and far more a nearly mathematical certainty. </p><p>Thinking about this fact, I realized that I really liked the idea of the game taking place in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. War-weary peasants, itinerant former soldiers, disaffected agents of a now-defunct regime... this era has many of the levers I like to pull in a game. Though it will have little effect upon the adventurers in the game, the game wants itself to be staged during the Bourbon Restoration. Excellent. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifFTCrUk2ldWsNA5MN4lMAhGx0-HmzwtHKZp-AIhhKgu_pJElAyIIxCT7UhE3uMCtkl8HVut1c-YuGehBIqrNJDozRr3ZKH6XDzNYumD43Xzdf7c0k2HPwv3iBDzaO6pO_l1dRaES1iZguiGRXE3kbrwEbuP5vWuHVof1IvjpV90zdJoUrPIg5EZZfwh0/s1500/Mary_Shelley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1019" data-original-width="1500" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifFTCrUk2ldWsNA5MN4lMAhGx0-HmzwtHKZp-AIhhKgu_pJElAyIIxCT7UhE3uMCtkl8HVut1c-YuGehBIqrNJDozRr3ZKH6XDzNYumD43Xzdf7c0k2HPwv3iBDzaO6pO_l1dRaES1iZguiGRXE3kbrwEbuP5vWuHVof1IvjpV90zdJoUrPIg5EZZfwh0/s320/Mary_Shelley.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>But that sounds all neat and tidy, right? You already know the year I've chosen -- 1818 -- because it's right there in the title of the blog post. In fact, I can't entirely recall how much of what I wrote above was my actual process and how much is retrofitted historical revisionism because I connect one other major event with the decision to set the game in 1818: that's the year that Mary Shelley published her novel <i>Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus</i>. <br /><p></p><p>While there are other, older "gothic" novels (and I need only direct you to <a href="http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Jack Shear's work</a> to look at those), <i>Frankenstein </i>is when the genre really <i>arrives</i>. And since contextualized gothic horror is really what any exploration of Transylvania needs to be, contextualizing with the historical markers of gothic horror really couldn't be more apropos, at least from my vantage point. </p><p>On the historical footing, Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich's conservative "balance of power" scheme has set in across Europe. Consolidating power in as few hands as possible, Metternich's grand scheme creates the last stable period for Absolutism and Autocracy in Europe, with that continent being carved up into various spheres of interest that all paid homage to one or another Absolutist ruler. Contrast that system of peonage and international vassalage with the semi-Liberal meritocratic autocracy of Napoleon's Empire, not to mention the displaced and disheartened Revolutionaires displaced on 18 Brumaire, and you have a very broad field of the oppressed. My favorite kind of field to sow. Add to this mix the background of the rise of the despair, bleak nostalgia and sinister undertones of gothic literature and what's left is a very fertile field indeed. </p><p>What should I plant?</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-47119296180282673132023-08-24T15:28:00.001-04:002023-08-24T15:28:00.142-04:00The Transylvania Game - WARPLAND RPGI picked up WotC's Ravenloft campaign setting guide when it came out a few years ago and I was surprised by what was actually a pretty tight little campaign setting. Sure, it was missing the grandeur of the 2e TSR boxed set, but it was a nice little setting. A lot of the hallmarks of Ravenloft were there, but I realized that I was dissatisfied with something about it, I just didn't know what. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHI3gfrhsMa_0FuAxUrfV94kWjDuzREhD-ECJFgiWaj6esopVnevYKjAayTvSQ2plI5MJZdlI2vELXTjLvSyZ7lM9XfHnWbtLpm89wynerBLC5D21yRdZlEQX5heDEOodOYbJ96tigco5QfDIv_ey0mW_Z-rZs5-gAa_-8C9tWUFuBhyYEqGxsrHMxJ0M/s800/1%20-%20dracula%20on%20the%20streets%20of%20Vienna%20in%201820%20in%20th.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHI3gfrhsMa_0FuAxUrfV94kWjDuzREhD-ECJFgiWaj6esopVnevYKjAayTvSQ2plI5MJZdlI2vELXTjLvSyZ7lM9XfHnWbtLpm89wynerBLC5D21yRdZlEQX5heDEOodOYbJ96tigco5QfDIv_ey0mW_Z-rZs5-gAa_-8C9tWUFuBhyYEqGxsrHMxJ0M/w320-h400/1%20-%20dracula%20on%20the%20streets%20of%20Vienna%20in%201820%20in%20th.png" width="320" /></a></div>It feels like Ravenloft has always drifted on the periphery of other people's work, right? Like, Strahd is just Dracula, we all know that. There are a bunch of examples like the lady Frankenstein who's a Dark Lord elsewhere, there's a wolfman, you get it. But the thing that really bothered me is "Why not just Dracula?" Why do we still use Strahd when Dracula is available? It just smacked of the old "our elves are different" trope from like every setting ever. Look at the source material, squint your eyes and then write about the squint. </div><div><br /></div><div>But why? What's gained? Why can't we just talk about Dracula and Frankenstein? They're public domain characters, so it's not a rights thing. Are we really dumb enough to think that players can't see through the transparent masking? Do we think that by simply changing some superficial details that players will pretend to be surprised by whatever predictable "turn" we throw their way? By deliberately shifting our cultural markers, we make what SHOULD BE an accessible Transylvania setting into <<squint>> Ravenloft. By changing those cultural markers and signifiers, the only thing that we accomplish is walling off our imaginary Transylvania from being accessed by people who don't have the same cultural markers. We make Transylvania less accessible by presenting a crappy version of it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Try this: as a search term, the name "Dracula" gets 85,100 searches <i>per month </i>on Google. "Strahd" gets 9,400. Yes, Strahd gets a lot of searches, but ask any of those 85,100 Dracula searchers who Strahd is. Now ask any of the 9,400 who Dracula is. Chances are, far more of the Strahd crowd will know who Dracula is (my guess is all of them) than Dracula crowd who know who Strahd is (maybe 10% at best, just going off of search volume). </div><div><br /></div><div>So why not just call him "Dracula?"</div><div><br /></div><div>That thought opened a door for me. </div><div><br /></div><div>Why Ravenloft? Why not Transylvania?</div><div><br /></div><div>I spent a lot of time with that idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since we're talking about Transylvania, which is a real place, why not make the game historical fiction? Sure, we're going to have supernatural and fantastical elements in it that belong in a Hammer Horror film, but we can have historical context, too. Turns out, you see, I'm a big fan of 19th century history, and the death of the Holy Roman Empire and birth of the Austrian (then ultimately the Austro-Hungarian empire) is a great time to set a game. Rewrite the Dark Lords of Ravenloft <i>back into </i>their original inspirations, but what about their "Dark Lord" nature? Where does that come from? Turns out that Romanian folklore has a pretty great answer for that. </div><div><br /></div><div>Rules-wise, I tried on a lot of different hats. DCC's Transylvanian Adventures? Close, but too fiddly and with too many details to track. CAIRN? Closer, but I realized that I really want to break with the whole OSR/NSR aesthetic. I have a hard time seeing reality reflected in them, if only because I have no idea what a 7th-level cleric looks like in real life and why they (probably) would have more hit points than I do. A story game? Maybe, but I feel like it would need to be very bespoke to work. And then I realized that WARPLAND secretly works equally well as a narrative or a traditional game. </div><div><br /></div><div>WARPLAND it is. <br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-11153206308773458122023-08-22T15:22:00.003-04:002023-08-22T15:22:32.807-04:00Harvest of the Skalls | Fiction<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuGxFgPntZE8mWJBF17Jlw3XUmEVhiApjvfuor1zkNClL5dvR4S-oedXaAwHJ9H21b8aGv8Mq9Zx5-3KF5t_t0CS8nF9pPe8Kb6tqyW0X2EKllehXtcstHBTSCcRg2YMafrDjgTCh-U_FjC-LMkWCwXNwAOfJu-4N0l187yN1KhbVfVaykMqwXSfl-Q5M/s800/1%20-%20An%20acid%20fantasy%20god%20of%20death%20the%20God%20of%20Blacke.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuGxFgPntZE8mWJBF17Jlw3XUmEVhiApjvfuor1zkNClL5dvR4S-oedXaAwHJ9H21b8aGv8Mq9Zx5-3KF5t_t0CS8nF9pPe8Kb6tqyW0X2EKllehXtcstHBTSCcRg2YMafrDjgTCh-U_FjC-LMkWCwXNwAOfJu-4N0l187yN1KhbVfVaykMqwXSfl-Q5M/s320/1%20-%20An%20acid%20fantasy%20god%20of%20death%20the%20God%20of%20Blacke.png" width="256" /></a></div><span style="white-space: normal;">Who is the chief of that horde? What fell warrior swings his sword at its vanguard, hurtling forward astride his beastly steed? He bears no shield, that warlord, that king; the arm that lesser men reserve for such protection holds his axe. Flanking him to either side were warriors just as fearsome and nearly </span>as fierce. Every one of them, man and woman alike, wore no color but the black of iron, black-stained leather and the night-black pennants trailing behind them that sent the wordless message: there shall be no quarter. These were the Skalls, and to stand against them was to drown in a tide of iron. <p></p><p>Riding next to the king was only person among the Skallic horde to wear white. Black and white beads made a veil before her face, forming the shape of an open eye, unblinking, ever alert. Atop her head, her beaded leather headdress was crowned by the antlers of a hart, from the tips of which hung tiny skulls and castoff bones. A mantle of white leather wrapped around her, half cloak, half shield. She had not the lack of caution her brother championed, for she was a priest of the Stag-Headed God, one of the three gods of death venerated by the Skalls. </p><p><span style="white-space: normal;">The Stag-Headed God was easily the least understood of these gods. The God of Blackened Skies had risen in popularity drastically in the civilized lands for reasons the Skalls could not comprehend; those worshippers in urban centers like Av Arat and Ur-Hadad made little sense to the marauding Skalls. The God Under the Mountain was less well-understood by outsiders; he was both the god of burial and the gods of deaths to the beasts and elements of the mountains. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV1xCQ3mh_zQxUk3QWW4tBMEtawmRQxKdGUxwc02XfTrmKk_gaDeWuGEUDLrhu3QMUSZ_1Tt8PO6qHyPkEPwDUkkzn1xxFLPRAmSIkXjolQ4xkrA8KJlE5ZmJ9eIs-qNQZLb9olihxv1-pCH-DeuYTL-cA8dzIFII93MxFH32hKVAiwTqyB6i_rYMBHB8/s800/0%20-%20An%20acid%20fantasy%20god%20of%20death%20the%20God%20of%20Blacke.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV1xCQ3mh_zQxUk3QWW4tBMEtawmRQxKdGUxwc02XfTrmKk_gaDeWuGEUDLrhu3QMUSZ_1Tt8PO6qHyPkEPwDUkkzn1xxFLPRAmSIkXjolQ4xkrA8KJlE5ZmJ9eIs-qNQZLb9olihxv1-pCH-DeuYTL-cA8dzIFII93MxFH32hKVAiwTqyB6i_rYMBHB8/s320/0%20-%20An%20acid%20fantasy%20god%20of%20death%20the%20God%20of%20Blacke.png" width="256" /></a></div>But the Stag-Headed God? Few scholars even knew of the third god, and for good reason: his priests moved among them, unbidden and unseen, slowly guiding their cities and towns toward greater prosperity, that they might prove a prize worthy of conquest by the might of Skallic armies. The Stag-Headed God was both hunter and prey; the god both oversaw the would-be prey of the Skalls to ensure their worthiness and they also ensured the worthiness of the Skalls, driving the savage beasts of wilder places to challenge the Skalls, claiming all who die to their claws and fangs as souls claimed by the Stag-Headed God. <p></p><p>The feeble villagers of Irsken did not know that the craftsman Vresek had been one of the priests of the Stag-Headed God, for they are trained in such deceit and treachery. They did not know that Vresek had sent word by secret messenger to his high priest, the lady Aska, or that she had passed on word to her brother, that force of nature which bore down upon Irsken now. Those weak villagers had grown fat and wealthy under Vresek’s guidance, and now, Vresek knew, it was time to harvest what he had sown. It was time for Koros of Skall to reap that harvest.</p><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-28890102804912421912023-08-15T10:00:00.024-04:002023-08-15T10:00:00.148-04:00Good To Know I Can Still Rely On You Two After All | Fiction<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYrTlb7RXT4RgfCUW0P5AF0HWCgpL8A1nZsxaO5iZHwPTmhiohxDuwFj-AEMz53SUSxS1vexqAD6A8pKiS14OsXO_59Rk0BfXMmd3hGQRRo60l5TiSGzp_YtMFMPJEH74ACg7wuQcjzgj7hF7Nc3u53Tj5h6NOgxAsBp7AaboCdegtWfMzuUZyOW1f8s/s640/3%20-%20an%20acid%20fantasy%20neolithic%20village%20In%20The%20Style.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOYrTlb7RXT4RgfCUW0P5AF0HWCgpL8A1nZsxaO5iZHwPTmhiohxDuwFj-AEMz53SUSxS1vexqAD6A8pKiS14OsXO_59Rk0BfXMmd3hGQRRo60l5TiSGzp_YtMFMPJEH74ACg7wuQcjzgj7hF7Nc3u53Tj5h6NOgxAsBp7AaboCdegtWfMzuUZyOW1f8s/s320/3%20-%20an%20acid%20fantasy%20neolithic%20village%20In%20The%20Style.png" width="256" /></a><i style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/08/ive-still-had-worse-birthdays.html" target="_blank"><span style="text-align: left;"> </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></a></i></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><i><a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/08/ive-still-had-worse-birthdays.html" target="_blank">Click here for the previous post in this story</a></i></span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span><div><span style="white-space: normal;"><span> </span>“What’s so fucking funny?” the hunter said, letting go of the litter he had used to drag the boar back to his clan’s encampment.</span><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sav held one hand to his mouth, pretending to hold in a guffaw, eyes bulging with mockery. Deets simply leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, that wide, missing-tooth smile of his. “Good thing you didn’t waste none. Pig’s blood’s just your shade.” </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The man dropped his spear at Deets’s feet, mouth hanging slack with sending the wordless message of exactly how over this moment he was. “Give me your knife, Deets. The good one.”</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Deets chuckled again, this time with a hint of incredulity. “Hear that, Sav? He wants my knife.”</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The good one,” the hunter reminded the pair.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“The good one at that,” Sav agreed.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Whatchu need it for, then, eh?” Deets said, his good humor over his clansman’s appearance slowing the eventual slide into violence that was Deets’s particular idiom. “The pig’s well dead.”</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“You blind, Deets?” he picked the spear back up and shook its naked end in Deets’s face. “I gotta go fishing and I thought I’d use the prettiest hook around.” </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Use your own.”</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Mine’s flint. I’ll have to sharpen it six times before I get that point out.” </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Hear that, Sav?” Deets mocked without taking his eyes off of the bloodied man.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Sounds like he best get to sharpening, eh Deets?” Sav said, rotating his head on his neck like a featherless owl, a taunt, a provocation. Sav took a prancing step, strange and exaggerated, head twisting, as he moved around his clansman. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Come the fuck on, Deets. I can do it clean and quick with your knife, just let me see it.”</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Why should I?” Deets said. His humor had fled him now. The confident disdain that settled over his face told the hunter that violence was inevitable. “Why not just stick it in your throat and take that pig for myself?” Deets harumphed once to himself and dropped his hands to his side, not so much as advancing toward the bloody man as leaning in toward him.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“For fuck’s sake, Deets, really?” </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Really.” </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span> </span><span> The hunter</span> heard a squelch in the mud behind him and to his left, he felt the force of weight shifting on his feet. Right about where Sav should be. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The tipless haft of spear still in his hand, he struck. In one motion, he brought the butt end of the spear around to strike Sav in the gut while the tip-end of the spear – the fraying slot where his old obsidian blade had been fitted – raked across Deets’s eyes. The groan from behind him presaged the plop of Sav’s body into the mud, the lithe man writhing in pain on the ground. Deets roared in pain as he reeled from the attack, shielding his eyes with his left hand while his right drew the knife in question.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Obsidian was still rare, though it was becoming more common, and was prized far above flint and other stones for nearly every purpose. It held a razor edge far longer than even flint could and was quick to sharp again, to knap back into shape. Every hunter of the tribe had at least one piece of obsidian, and he guarded it jealously. The clan itself was the hunters’ only source of the stone; the clan had no inheritance mores, and a dead hunter’s obsidian was always returned to the clan. Our hunter had but the one spear tip, not even flake tools; he'd hoped this boar would change that. He was right. </span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8BsaHCp_hjbtWupkASfgKK2h1lZzLO3aZ_Vv5qw5Vn0nQ0mS0uD_MjHLIRtfO4JdXIWBaWTBlqtILFUBYYYg4aQc0KeH7pmcIlgqchTSh8wvp0AeMQMH33Yoih8OAS0KujIor7Gjew8s-aQoPzQhQFYN-WHBzdGfgNmBtkhDpn0kOPbjjwKKGer9PwA/s640/2%20-%20an%20acid%20fantasy%20neolithic%20village%20In%20The%20Style.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8BsaHCp_hjbtWupkASfgKK2h1lZzLO3aZ_Vv5qw5Vn0nQ0mS0uD_MjHLIRtfO4JdXIWBaWTBlqtILFUBYYYg4aQc0KeH7pmcIlgqchTSh8wvp0AeMQMH33Yoih8OAS0KujIor7Gjew8s-aQoPzQhQFYN-WHBzdGfgNmBtkhDpn0kOPbjjwKKGer9PwA/s320/2%20-%20an%20acid%20fantasy%20neolithic%20village%20In%20The%20Style.png" width="256" /></a></div><br /> Deets waved the short obsidian knife wildly in front of him, peering out from behind the arm that covered his eyes. The hunter could see that Deets still had at least one good eye, though how good – or the state of Deets’s other eye – remained to be, if you’ll pardon the pun, seen. He backed up from Deets’s lunatic swings and took the opportunity to stomp his bare heel once more into Sav’s gut. Glancing down swiftly, he could see that Sav had already drawn his own obsidian blade, which now rested a few comfortable lengths from Sav’s hand. If he had been a moment slower, hesitated for the blink of an eye, and knife would have been in his back. Or across his throat. Or stabbed into his ear. Or his eye. Thank the spirits for squelching mud.<p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He spun his spear haft on Deets again, this time berating him with the butt end of the haft about his head and shoulders. Deets, half-blind and all anger tried deflecting the blows, tried shielding himself from them with his knife, but in his anger, he could only lash out where he had just been struck, rather than where he was about to be struck. In the clan, you took what opportunities presented themselves. Just when Deets had focused all of his rage on warding off the blood-covered man’s rapid strikes, he changed tactics and swiped Deets’s feet out from underneath him. Deets – and his knife – joined Sav in the mud.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Well, mates,” he said, huffing from the exertion on top of his existing exhaustion, “good to know I can rely on you two, after all.” He knelt down in the mud, feeling it cool his naked knee, and grabbed both his opponents’ knives. “I ask for one knife, I get two.” Deciding that Sav was far too lonely, he gave Deets a matching kick in the gut. “I have had worse birthdays.”</span></p><div><br /></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-91287874999510112782023-08-08T10:00:00.001-04:002023-08-08T10:00:00.139-04:00Three Civilized Skills for WARPLAND RPG<p> Keeping the new skills for <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND</a> rolling, here are three skills that really shine in civilized lands. Bonus: all three skills are heretical by nature!</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo9C-JRqQizcXiwjGcsFiBTcdbOcH8BS62iakaW3A_upYc3ERsnTVLKzcSQaIbQ2SdPzZyXCLvVp58GfoKKxikYiB0xrUJCgZ4Vr055l4kFeHOhilUznxhllcJORdX1TUoDWrFowG6VOY13YkAXhQr6r1HTWZUmjToZeRvijuBl0_rSSU9sEgnR2s8rVA/s640/WARPLAND_student_a.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo9C-JRqQizcXiwjGcsFiBTcdbOcH8BS62iakaW3A_upYc3ERsnTVLKzcSQaIbQ2SdPzZyXCLvVp58GfoKKxikYiB0xrUJCgZ4Vr055l4kFeHOhilUznxhllcJORdX1TUoDWrFowG6VOY13YkAXhQr6r1HTWZUmjToZeRvijuBl0_rSSU9sEgnR2s8rVA/s320/WARPLAND_student_a.png" width="256" /></a></div>Student</h2><p>You may be a devotee of a renowned scholar or a journeyman honing your skills. Perhaps a novice priest not ready to take orders. You may even be a part of a secret cabal of knowledge-seekers or some other, even more heretical organization. Yes, you can read & write. Possessed of the boundless confidence evinced by students throughout time, once per session, you can declare that you have studied a particular field. Make a self-aggrandizing statement about your study of the field and spend a Willpower point. Your Lore tests based on that field of knowledge are made at +1 until the end of the session. Penniless, you start the game solely in the possession of writing implements (disguised in a manner you describe) as well as a hand-copied textbook detailing the field of knowledge you suddenly know all about (see above). </p><h2>Clandestine</h2><p>Those in power -- be they aristocrats or the church -- must be removed. You are part of one of the many cults and secret societies that spread like a poxy plague throughout the so-called "civilized" lands of WARPLAND. Adept at hidden meanings and messages, you have mastered the hidden speech of innuendo and may attempt a Wits test to successfully convey your meaning without actually saying what you mean. Furthermore, your network of co-conspirators, revolutionaries and opportunists can often supply you with material support for your activities; once per session, you may spend a Willpower point and make a Wits test to acquire a special item (or items) that will assist whatever revolutionary activity you're planning. It is up to the GM to determine the scope of this item. Sadly, clandestine activities often test the resourcefulness of the character and thus you begin play with few resources, but carry a signifier (such as a signet ring or amulet) of your organization; being caught with this symbol marks you for death in the region of your origin. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Noble</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvDent6Tabqc4-cJAe76fOR5jsQ0EfgujIIMlYZ2bjt7rSYogv-geVll2KjPWz_1_4PQO0TEvDlnWT9A_tmqywoYIUbyNPhgXWlJlf5Mwdsz1NHktea0T1E2eMJdfLTs8Fhm5Kqvc-VCVsX5Mf6z72BCSEl3Viy1hJXGOFuFlcUFwGFyv2KjkD9-xdQ4/s640/WARPLAND_Noble_b.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcvDent6Tabqc4-cJAe76fOR5jsQ0EfgujIIMlYZ2bjt7rSYogv-geVll2KjPWz_1_4PQO0TEvDlnWT9A_tmqywoYIUbyNPhgXWlJlf5Mwdsz1NHktea0T1E2eMJdfLTs8Fhm5Kqvc-VCVsX5Mf6z72BCSEl3Viy1hJXGOFuFlcUFwGFyv2KjkD9-xdQ4/s320/WARPLAND_Noble_b.png" width="256" /></a></div>You are high-born and you know it. Better yet, those around you know it. Your blood ties to the aristocracy (most likely of Sunno or Obsidia, though there may be mutant aristocracy in Arkanar, who knows?) have given you an extensive, occasionally blasphemous education, including the heretical art of literacy. You are proficient in one general weapon type beyond the usual list (such as "swords" or "axes" or "bows") and gain a +1 bonus to all Social tests against the underclasses and allied aristocrats, but suffer a -1 penalty to all Social tests against enemy nobles. In addition, once per session, you can spend a Willpower point to assert your privileges and reroll any failed Social test. You may start the game with an ancestral weapon (of the type you're proficient in) and a suit of Medium or Heavy Armor; however, recent carousing has caused you to squander all but the 1d6x5 cp on your person. <p></p><p><br /></p><p>More WARPLAND Skills: <a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/05/three-skills-for-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank">Part 1</a> | <a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/07/three-more-skills-for-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank">Part 2</a> | <a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/07/3-dark-fantasy-skills-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank">Part 3: Dark Fantasy Skills</a> <br /><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-13200709404914078242023-08-01T16:45:00.002-04:002023-08-04T09:58:52.526-04:00I've Still Had Worse Birthdays | Fiction<p> <span style="white-space: normal;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjE_iw3x03bE1bxNS2rJ7NQ-N59RgNYr0Rxqk-clzVUY2di5C7RF-aHScL6sbQOZKPqOGoYlUP5FoTPw6igZuiXp8Qvo6Vl-JMJok6KVEmCzq1YAV6XOewi9iGLFiiGtvGZXrpH-fLZHSy0CSUVfMc417mmfQbMulEi8p0GLsQsUtGx8vGPWyxs3Pcdyw/s640/3%20-%20a%20neolithic%20hunter%20wearing%20only%20a%20loincloth%20an_1.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjE_iw3x03bE1bxNS2rJ7NQ-N59RgNYr0Rxqk-clzVUY2di5C7RF-aHScL6sbQOZKPqOGoYlUP5FoTPw6igZuiXp8Qvo6Vl-JMJok6KVEmCzq1YAV6XOewi9iGLFiiGtvGZXrpH-fLZHSy0CSUVfMc417mmfQbMulEi8p0GLsQsUtGx8vGPWyxs3Pcdyw/s320/3%20-%20a%20neolithic%20hunter%20wearing%20only%20a%20loincloth%20an_1.png" width="256" /></a></div><span style="white-space: pre;"> Th</span>e hunter pulled his spear shaft from the boar with a sickening, sloppy sound. The freshly cadaverous body released the haft not unlike a bottle releasing a cork; it came suddenly and was followed swiftly with a deep red flow. This river carried not the tang of tannins or bouquet of the barrel, but the iron bite of blood. He grimaced in distaste as the gore welled on the ground at his feet, slopping up over the leather sole of his sandals and squeezing between his toes. He was glad that he had hunted alone; he could only imagine the shit any of his clan’s other hunters would have given him.<p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He leaned his weight on his right leg and the spear in his right hand, kicking at the boar with his left in an attempt to roll it over. The injury – a spear wound through the still-beating heart of the boar – pumped blood as the corpse rolled and he was covered to the waist in the spray. He would laugh, he thought, if he saw this happen to anyone else; instead, he stood aghast at his own continuing misjudgment and misfortune.</span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As the last pulses of the boar’s life poured out onto the forest floor, he exhaled long and confounded, the force of his breath flapping his lips in incredulity. “But the boar’s dead, so that’s a thing,” he thought to himself. “At least the hearth will eat for a few days.” He scouted the ground for deadfall branches to build a litter; he wasn’t the strongest in the clan and there’s no way he could shoulder a beast this size. At least he still had his spear. As he comforted himself with that last thought, he glanced over at the end of the haft. </span></p><p>“Ah, fuck!” he grumbled, out loud, but clearly to an audience of only himself. </p><p>The spear had lost its point. </p><p>The carefully knapped chunk of obsidian had come free of its bindings inside the animal, and he did not relish fishing around inside its heart; the escalating gore aside, the obsidian was sure to shred his fingers with its array of razor-sharp points.</p><p>“You know,” he continued to his inner audience, “all of this and I’ve still had worse birthdays.”</p><br /><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-29481559327273967502023-07-28T10:00:00.001-04:002023-07-28T10:00:00.154-04:00I'm Running For City Council<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://adammforward2.com" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="356" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7D_NxU8PqpPxYNfNZhMmFNdch8UhL3prqBXYYiEnYcyhcMOrIFRlQvPaqYkfwN9MbN8fnROzNmnow5rK9ZbCYG-YH6pWPLx1Z18ltrjz_lIaFzOt9ekZjiZiL_vcx-YL67xye2A1bdrZTJVEVD9qlngEhkbF_Kn_w47j26E28nmx5_y1JZ02kkcRAZ4s/w400-h225/Adam_M_For_Ward2.webp" width="400" /></a></div><br /> I may not have mentioned it here, if only because I try to keep the Real Life (tm) separate from the Gaming Life (c), but I'm running for City Council in my (since 2016) home of South Haven, Michigan. You can click the image above to go to my campaign's site and learn a bit more about my positions and what matters here in SoHa. I don't plan on talking about my positions or campaign over here (except as my natural Leftism intersects with gaming stuff), but I know that many gamers in my circles share my values and positions. I felt I oughta let you know that I'm out here, trying to live those values. <p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-44753512751888515152023-07-25T10:00:00.006-04:002023-07-25T10:00:00.133-04:00Three Dark Fantasy Skills for the WARPLAND RPG<p><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The third part in an ongoing series of new skills for the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG by Gavriel Quiroga</a>. Today, we dip our toes into dark fantasy with a trio of skills meant to bring a little bit of horror to your WARPLAND PCs. </i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVHR5AEZvRh9V-ABPX32kXA2JGm1T9wVYPEkcVZLJmZZwON7JRpepdOfQU2Qi2zNcxEL8QYAbjEZypZ55QOd49ZvDpSUWtWm0nLg7hSeNyxcu6cvdrRHTVSNql5bk40A5Yqp8emfZ-_DmzQWIYmxK_ecNDIAbNAKyH2n4VuV62XB8_kshXkAZNJq2UqI/s640/2%20-%20A%20Far%20Future%20Revenant%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="A Far Future Revenant for WARPLAND RPG" border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVHR5AEZvRh9V-ABPX32kXA2JGm1T9wVYPEkcVZLJmZZwON7JRpepdOfQU2Qi2zNcxEL8QYAbjEZypZ55QOd49ZvDpSUWtWm0nLg7hSeNyxcu6cvdrRHTVSNql5bk40A5Yqp8emfZ-_DmzQWIYmxK_ecNDIAbNAKyH2n4VuV62XB8_kshXkAZNJq2UqI/w256-h320/2%20-%20A%20Far%20Future%20Revenant%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20.png" title="WARPLAND Revenant" width="256" /></a></i></div><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></i><p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-30250897-7fff-a1cb-a863-a9c188f154ca"><div><span><h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Revenant*</span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i>*This skill counts as two skill selections.</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">You know that you died. You remember it. So why are you still alive? Once per session, if you are dropped to zero hit points, you may spend all of your Willpower points to return to consciousness and resume the fight (you must spend all remaining Willpower points). For each Willpower point spent, you may roll 1d6; you regain that many hit points (up to your maximum). When selecting this skill, you also gain a Taint. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></p></span></div><h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-size: large;">Warp Wolf*</span></span></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i>*This skill counts as two skill selections. </i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">There are no scholars in Warpland, thus no one debates the origins of the Warp Wolf, but all know tales of those who take on the shape of a wolf to hunt. Once per session, you can transform into a monstrous hybrid of man and beast by spending a Willpower point, gaining a natural tooth and claw attack that does +2 Slashing as well as 1 Armor for one scene. Further, you may spend a Willpower point to tap into your bestial senses (whether in hybrid form or not) to track foes; on a successful Lore test, none can hide from you. When selecting this skill, you must also select one Negative Mutation and one Taint. </span></p><br /><h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 11pt; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiePTkWg3rdLVKLw7MuQkTRLzkH9cw154uU0YF7lmIdS7jJG3FShh9v-HYes1KRM7kro_v8OMDG42Ux-pP1eCBZUTc__WvEeHoq6bcgv-rv80CNOEoLHaugHCyXmptFgSUdkdIsi4TvQcNOBqT4_z1_-PySpaYO4v8mrzzWasBdJWL0uk9L54IO_CvjWSc/s640/3%20-%20A%20Far%20Future%20Vampire%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20M.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Far Future Vampire for WARPLAND" border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiePTkWg3rdLVKLw7MuQkTRLzkH9cw154uU0YF7lmIdS7jJG3FShh9v-HYes1KRM7kro_v8OMDG42Ux-pP1eCBZUTc__WvEeHoq6bcgv-rv80CNOEoLHaugHCyXmptFgSUdkdIsi4TvQcNOBqT4_z1_-PySpaYO4v8mrzzWasBdJWL0uk9L54IO_CvjWSc/w256-h320/3%20-%20A%20Far%20Future%20Vampire%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20M.png" title="WARPLAND Vampire" width="256" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;">Vampire*</span></span></h2><h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i>*This skill counts as two skill selections.</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Through mishap, ritual or curse, you have become one of the undead. For every turn spent in sunlight, test Might to avoid damage (sunlight is a +2 weapon). You gain a natural bite attack (+0 damage, heal damage equal to ½ the damage done by this attack) and once per session, you may spend a Willpower point and a Lore test to mesmerize an NPC. While mesmerized, the NPC will treat you as a trusted friend and confidant, perhaps a lover. You also gain two Taints. </span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div></h2><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><i>Check out my other posts about new skills for WARPLAND <a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/05/three-skills-for-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank">here (Part 1)</a> and <a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/07/three-more-skills-for-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank">here (Part 2)</a></i></span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">*This post contains affiliate links.</span></div></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-75814633386384409442023-07-18T10:00:00.006-04:002023-07-18T10:00:00.148-04:00Three More Skills for the WARPLAND RPG<p>I enjoyed coming up with my last set of skills for Gavriel Quiroga's <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG</a> so much that I immediately started looking for other things to turn into skills! This is a very fun way for me to inject my personal heavy metal acid fantasy blacklight poster vibe into a game that already is swinging that vibe pretty strongly.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNJAZAVBVd6YZSlwu_FIscViWOd9mhmeshTv8t_KniGHQy54UPIQGskLPRgaWYTL72_wdCpGBDsqRxlE9D6ro5F8yk02kf1eVPxgL1aIxpoIcP4G15m34f3Z8gPqNhVh_f2zPqVM2Vo6m40GQzUAac2DFxr8j8U24IkwnW8t-cWm0o90UsyjCWQkm/s512/2%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20religious%20cultist%20zealot%20in%20a%20poi.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="scourge for warpland rpg" border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNJAZAVBVd6YZSlwu_FIscViWOd9mhmeshTv8t_KniGHQy54UPIQGskLPRgaWYTL72_wdCpGBDsqRxlE9D6ro5F8yk02kf1eVPxgL1aIxpoIcP4G15m34f3Z8gPqNhVh_f2zPqVM2Vo6m40GQzUAac2DFxr8j8U24IkwnW8t-cWm0o90UsyjCWQkm/w320-h320/2%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20religious%20cultist%20zealot%20in%20a%20poi.png" title="Scourge" width="320" /></a></div>Scourge</h2><p>Seen by most outside their order as intolerant zealots, Scourges cleave closer to the Tenet than many are comfortable. Experts in the use and application of the cleansing fire of the True Light, Scourges can capably handle any incendiary or flammable device or substance adroitly and can quickly assess a situation (Wits test) to determine the most effective way to turn it into a conflagration. Once per session, a Scourge may spend a Willpower point to create flame where none exists; this flame persists for 1d4 hours without fuel, or longer with it. If this flame is applied to a weapon, that weapon does +1 damage.</p><h2>Herald</h2><p>In a world that abhors the written word, the only way for news to spread is by mouth. Heralds enjoy a measure of freedom to travel unknown to common folk, and will not be prevented from entering any settlement (with few notable exceptions) on promise of word of the world abroad. Blurring the line between diplomat and gossip-monger, verbal journalist and spy, heralds are able to identify and interpret any heraldic or informative symbols with inerrant accuracy. Heralds begin the game in possession of one mount of the player's choice. Once per session, the herald may declare a local contact for hot gossip, spend a Willpower point and test Wits. If the test is successful, the contact is present and can be located; if not, they cannot be located. On a complication, someone else is looking for that contact, too.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN7oA87NHD2yvGyKjQWDLXc0H6dVt93pO_1SuL3U6JagKacsL7jsLIH22juTIUf6TAhN5lOOqYlNpSZAN9eSJjOlTli3DHnewccow8mvEtxfHsmNbasnYZaJhEhltFNMuTSESE5zwiPRTU4z1ota5ksCnjUUNYJIPnAbAJs6DnpVZYeJwdVeI1rTBz/s512/2%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20torturer%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="torturer for warpland rpg" border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN7oA87NHD2yvGyKjQWDLXc0H6dVt93pO_1SuL3U6JagKacsL7jsLIH22juTIUf6TAhN5lOOqYlNpSZAN9eSJjOlTli3DHnewccow8mvEtxfHsmNbasnYZaJhEhltFNMuTSESE5zwiPRTU4z1ota5ksCnjUUNYJIPnAbAJs6DnpVZYeJwdVeI1rTBz/w320-h320/2%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20torturer%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20.png" title="Torturer" width="320" /></a></div>Torturer</h2><div>Luminaries of the True Light, grim warlocks of Noch and the techno-lords of Lagash all make use of the torturer's art. These musicians in the key of pain are virtuosos with thumbscrews, blades, torture devices like the rack and the very limits of human tolerance. Torturers can instantly evaluate any device by its capacity to inflict pain. Once per session, a torturer who practices their arts on an NPC victim may spend a Willpower point and make a Lore test; if successful, the torturer may ask the GM a number of questions equal to the higher of the two dice. The GM must answer these questions honestly and should volunteer relevant tangential information. The victim takes an amount of damage equal to the questions asked. If the dice roll fails, the GM informs the torturer of three pieces of information, only one of which is true, and the torturer has no way to determine which is true. </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.kickassistan.net/2023/05/three-skills-for-warpland-rpg.html" target="_blank"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Read Part One Here!</span></i></a> <br /><p><i>* This article contains affiliate links.</i></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-45134430594807724182023-07-11T10:00:00.002-04:002023-07-11T10:00:00.140-04:00The Scraplands<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhME1KV1eFChzP4cZPOtA596KFr1Eoms8Ac9khcX5aF4YNg1Elt0flOVoMFRxNlBReSx1QiirTnA_6EtnOOG2G55owDmM6BrLvy2S6Qk9Ca7Ya-APJ5kBVSHFMS36Z59-O8w2-FF_Xm8zwTOuXiVYKyUAMYGPCbjnEf2SvThnV1JaRtu98xKFEa_x3_IY4/s640/3%20-Scraplands.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhME1KV1eFChzP4cZPOtA596KFr1Eoms8Ac9khcX5aF4YNg1Elt0flOVoMFRxNlBReSx1QiirTnA_6EtnOOG2G55owDmM6BrLvy2S6Qk9Ca7Ya-APJ5kBVSHFMS36Z59-O8w2-FF_Xm8zwTOuXiVYKyUAMYGPCbjnEf2SvThnV1JaRtu98xKFEa_x3_IY4/s320/3%20-Scraplands.png" width="256" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span> </span><span> </span>Far away on that blasted southern continent known to only the most learned in the lands of men, but much more widely outside of those backwaters, as Kalaong, lies a gorge not peculiar for its dimensions, but rather its contents. Seven days journey into the deep, heavy wastelands from Bol Atuk, the first signs of the tinkers’ trails are witnessed. As night and day blend into an unbearable ochre slog, you will lose track of the days and when you do, you will soon find yourself at the border of the Scraplands.</span><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>While the Scraplands and Kaloang are ill-known in the lands of men, those perennial pilgrims known as to men as tinkers are far more common, their migrations being noteworthy events. Few doubt the devotion of tinkers, these blessed nomads, for their pilgrimage to and fro throughout all lands results in a supply of sharp knives and mended tools merely at the cost of whatever refuse the community could make no use of. And thus, eventually, the tinkers of the world had organized a vast network of trash collection, exchanging the discarded remnants of man’s existence for more useful supplies in a wave southward, ever southward, across seas and continents to that southerly land of Kalaong, across that wasteland you lost all time in, to here, now, the Scraplands.</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In some distant future that may never come to pass, when archeologists finally discover the Scraplands, it is doubtful that any would survive from the excitement. But should they fail to succumb to their own ecstasy, those archeologists would have a treasure trove unimaginable: relics of every era, of every time, every age, every fad, every half-baked trend or quixotic conspiracy, ever. Any of it. If it has existed in man’s depth and breadth of impossibly vast cultural multiplicity over the entire span of man’s existence, then it is somehow reflected here. Somewhere. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And the somewhere is the problem. For the Scraplands are vast. Mile after trackless mile of scrap metal, plastics smeared with eons-old organic matter, crumbled concrete, bone nothings, and other, less-specific garbages is the sad fact of the average geography in the Scraplands, punctuated frequently with the remnants of large hulks of one variety or another: colosseums or factories or skyscrapers or airships impaled on grand lances of obsidian. But even these grand structures are fleeting; eventually, each of them will succumb to the Scraplands, to become part of that immense, landscape melange of everything. </span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1CfofUG02x7d-BYl9uwQ4mnFZFaaZxv8Ho_-J37G43Gyc9IQeLfPql8oh4kW_eMjYjdYcuRCgqkm0YMw6mko39J3L3NMXW2CfI99BiUDFfQ4XBxoJVW_d_jjWMTtLLCVFcuSIr_jFkfS99FwFcGNJJ2B0nliNd8HzDXSWSRvLALVYHFzOk6ZuCyRBAa0/s640/2%20-%20Scraplands.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1CfofUG02x7d-BYl9uwQ4mnFZFaaZxv8Ho_-J37G43Gyc9IQeLfPql8oh4kW_eMjYjdYcuRCgqkm0YMw6mko39J3L3NMXW2CfI99BiUDFfQ4XBxoJVW_d_jjWMTtLLCVFcuSIr_jFkfS99FwFcGNJJ2B0nliNd8HzDXSWSRvLALVYHFzOk6ZuCyRBAa0/s320/2%20-%20Scraplands.png" width="256" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It is to this place that the tinkers of the world bring your garbage, dear friend, for this is the end of the road for all things discarded. The tinkers make their holy pilgrimage in fulfillment of their vows to the Overwright, that living god of industry and immensity who labors ceaselessly at the center of the Scraplands, their numberless arms and eyes uncountable in turn examine and repair all things they light upon. In return for their holy devotion, the Overwright makes gifts of these newly-whole objects to the tinkers. The value of these gifts, however, can in no way be assured; sometimes discarded items are discarded purely for want of a use. </span><p></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And yet the Overwright’s minions are by no means the only denizens of the Scraplands, nor even a plurality much less a majority. Scavengers from all over the world are drawn to the Scraplands, the promise of lucrative plunder and salvage pulling them in like a bee to a flower. And yet, this is no mere flower; this is the pitcher plant. The generations of people of all varied types and manners left to fend for their own in the Scraplands often prey on the new arrivals, sometimes going so far as to establish elaborate “honey trap” excavation sites, luring such adventurers in with that siren call of wealth unimaginable, only to be met with ambush after boobytrap after gimmick after puzzle. Add in some secret doors and a wandering monster table and you have what people of your era call a “dungeon.”</span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The peoples of the Scraplands are many and wildly varied. It is wise not to allow yourself to think narrowly in terms of “personhood” in the Scraplands, or what one “people” might consist of. Trash pirates whose ships ply the currents of maether that waft up from the piles of refuse raid tribes of grazing manotaurs and synthitaurs and omnitaurs who in turn wage ceaseless if somewhat petty warfare against the Shroom Sultanate of Basaq. Were one to mistake the Shroom Sultan’s immobility for a lack of personhood – for he is often mistaken for architecture by those unfamiliar – one could very swiftly find oneself the host to colony spores and a most pleasant future you would have indeed. A ceaselessly pleasant, unthinking, simple, uncomplicated pleasant future. Welcome to the colony. Personhood respects personhood in the Scraplands.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></span></p><p><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>To those savvy adventurers and reavers who find what little success there is to be had in the Scraplands, there is a greater power that offers wealth and success in return for assistance with her inscrutable goals. She is a shadow, a phantom; some posit she is a ghost, still others, a god. In the deep places, the lonely places, the places without light or warmth, these are her abodes, her demesnes. Plunge headlong into this pile of refuse, she may whisper to a devoted servant, and pull forth what treasures lie within. The Moth Queen knows where every good score is in the Scraplands and she will part with that knowledge if her faith is kept. </span></span></p><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-88855438367385063432023-07-05T16:49:00.001-04:002023-07-05T16:49:43.453-04:00In The Witching Wood - Development Draft Released<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSY6bo-k89V_krftN3uu8WwLlTBKMHBvoeRFt9YEtKBhcP2pLChEY_MhopLO1SiAZ5DBBX-cbGQC3SUIaIsJz5qvuRnFSztx70Qf4GtZcJRda6U2hn86GIG9kdjwM-foY-IaiVqrM28KrPfY4HkmDMLDoWHi_UPfZcBJnvP_U8wSsi0PfbJm9_Af2Qie8/s1080/InTheWitchingWoodCover_v01.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSY6bo-k89V_krftN3uu8WwLlTBKMHBvoeRFt9YEtKBhcP2pLChEY_MhopLO1SiAZ5DBBX-cbGQC3SUIaIsJz5qvuRnFSztx70Qf4GtZcJRda6U2hn86GIG9kdjwM-foY-IaiVqrM28KrPfY4HkmDMLDoWHi_UPfZcBJnvP_U8wSsi0PfbJm9_Af2Qie8/s320/InTheWitchingWoodCover_v01.png" width="320" /></a> <br />Last weekend I mentioned that I'd started on a project for the <a href="https://itch.io/jam/a-town-a-forest-a-dungeon" target="_blank">A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam for the Cairn RPG over on Itch.io</a>. I wasn't quite able to land the project before the cutoff time of 2p today (5 July 2023), but I did compile what I've got and submit that instead. </p><p>I'm calling this a "Development Draft" if only because that's what it occurred to me to call it. I'll be adding to it until it has all of the content I intend for it to have, then I'll shop around for an editor and start on the art & layout. </p><p>One of the coolest parts of this process has been establishing some writing accountability for myself. Every time I stopped writing for the day, I would compile what I'd written so far and share it with someone who hadn't seen it yet. In a way, I suppose, I'm continuing to do the same thing: releasing <a href="https://noapostrophe.itch.io/witchingwood" target="_blank">In The Witching Wood on Itch</a> for this Jam means I'm accountable to everyone who bothers to look at it. </p><p>Let's hope that works. </p><p>
<iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/2149176?dark=true" width="552" height="167"><a href="https://noapostrophe.itch.io/witchingwood">In The Witching Wood | Adventure for Cairn RPG by No Apostrophe Press</a></iframe>
<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-87122653055609513492023-07-03T10:00:00.001-04:002023-07-03T10:00:00.142-04:00From Whence None Return - Some Thoughts on a Dungeon Phenomenon in RPGs<h2 style="text-align: left;">First</h2><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDde3wB1BTJWSBDEV5stSaOSZQlmcgDky9Aknvxzjq7-Cq4gQOZCsOK9zeo8f1OHCtxuyRP8KGOL2s_UgABJxg3nQpT6zstKbPyCn3Z95Zatd6CucpxGVRX_R8ZoQt2T-w2G8XEi072B-m7coejpPGTn9iMYSDmMhNcj_9pYEEKGr63YF3nuuJf_RX/s512/1%20-%20the%20dungeon%20from%20which%20none%20return%20In%20The%20Styl.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDde3wB1BTJWSBDEV5stSaOSZQlmcgDky9Aknvxzjq7-Cq4gQOZCsOK9zeo8f1OHCtxuyRP8KGOL2s_UgABJxg3nQpT6zstKbPyCn3Z95Zatd6CucpxGVRX_R8ZoQt2T-w2G8XEi072B-m7coejpPGTn9iMYSDmMhNcj_9pYEEKGr63YF3nuuJf_RX/s320/1%20-%20the%20dungeon%20from%20which%20none%20return%20In%20The%20Styl.png" width="320" /></a></div>The thought that any given dungeon or location would be so dangerous that none have ever returned, should be a basic description of any dungeon. If a dungeon is <i>survivable </i>by average villagers who are the ones telling the tales here, then it's not so much a dungeon, is it? It's a respectable hole in the ground notably devoid of any devious traps or deadly threats and therefore of any remarkable treasures. Thus, in order for a dungeon to properly be a dungeon, there should be a grave threat that any who enter will likely never return. "From which none return" is the basic level of the stakes in any dungeon.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9BQ7sWeWUbe_LyvuvHSe46izWWteA-hiR21ITJfzqF5kD-TbV0VzuXNn_rqfy6way1LJHxCyFR85nurvmLuKd-67seDg6vq61LECEQctOET5ITOkf1rNxRp6dArVMyt75ooHTAeX1yZ84Njv5qjTXE0xbj_qQ2nInIk8drkN0zXbuXiEYpp75HtUG/s512/3%20-%20the%20dungeon%20from%20which%20none%20return%20In%20The%20Styl.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9BQ7sWeWUbe_LyvuvHSe46izWWteA-hiR21ITJfzqF5kD-TbV0VzuXNn_rqfy6way1LJHxCyFR85nurvmLuKd-67seDg6vq61LECEQctOET5ITOkf1rNxRp6dArVMyt75ooHTAeX1yZ84Njv5qjTXE0xbj_qQ2nInIk8drkN0zXbuXiEYpp75HtUG/s320/3%20-%20the%20dungeon%20from%20which%20none%20return%20In%20The%20Styl.png" width="320" /></a></div>Second</h2><div>If a location is one from which no one has ever returned, then by nature no one can know anything about it but the most mythic of tales and remotest of rumors. Only the barest fraction of the place's history could even be hinted at to the villagers and rubes the adventurers are fleecing for information Some of that information should be misleading, possibly due to ages of oral tradition and misrememberance and mistranslation. Your rumor table is correspondingly mostly false, but every falsehood contains a misunderstood truth.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDwDkhqP1pqSAgr1xb6vzaB_1SwsmbPtRnRVS5Eem-AiRjqtWlSP-YGf-2ajUOTNycgz7gkQ9H8WVcxjAh4vTQRkwUoz2YIW7XylcMwzpNK_yfSVva_GtL-bX_0RldYrY1lzbVwNtLzfCQer2LsAZ_DJv2UJbQtDr9lKvPjarubP3hMP0L93R4tF8/s512/0%20-%20the%20dungeon%20from%20which%20none%20return%20In%20The%20Styl.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDwDkhqP1pqSAgr1xb6vzaB_1SwsmbPtRnRVS5Eem-AiRjqtWlSP-YGf-2ajUOTNycgz7gkQ9H8WVcxjAh4vTQRkwUoz2YIW7XylcMwzpNK_yfSVva_GtL-bX_0RldYrY1lzbVwNtLzfCQer2LsAZ_DJv2UJbQtDr9lKvPjarubP3hMP0L93R4tF8/s320/0%20-%20the%20dungeon%20from%20which%20none%20return%20In%20The%20Styl.png" width="320" /></a></div></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Third</h2><div>"From which none return" is not identical to "that kills everyone." There could be any number of reasons that people never return from the place. Perhaps it's because everyone who seeks the place out does so because they're meeting a lover and eloping to some far-off land, using the resources that they find in this place, provided by the local temple of the god of ardor. Perhaps some feature of the dungeon transforms them into pollywogs, and by the time they metamorphose into frogs, they've left their human lives far behind. Medusa is always an option. Perhaps there's even a way to undo the reason no one ever returns from here.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivare3B6i9bEOIUwajGajAtfllZzBT1WHC4QNuHHWDf8WXWTErkxBrGi_gYwlb1J_q2v44_7OMkhHTT2g_5xNCMVtm7jZ4JFzntJROa4wS3DoVKL-ObQXIyKpkOMg7RKh1P_ZQPqcTb_V8TB52x-Fmf7DcOMg3L5CoSp4HabLhITtGAt-3u_nk9vaB/s512/3%20-%20a%20far%20future%20psionic%20obelisk%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20M.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivare3B6i9bEOIUwajGajAtfllZzBT1WHC4QNuHHWDf8WXWTErkxBrGi_gYwlb1J_q2v44_7OMkhHTT2g_5xNCMVtm7jZ4JFzntJROa4wS3DoVKL-ObQXIyKpkOMg7RKh1P_ZQPqcTb_V8TB52x-Fmf7DcOMg3L5CoSp4HabLhITtGAt-3u_nk9vaB/s320/3%20-%20a%20far%20future%20psionic%20obelisk%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20M.png" width="320" /></a></div>Joesky Tax: The Hill From Which None Return</h2><div>Though none in the village below know the name "anasynchron," an anasynchron is precisely the source of their troubles. "That hill from which none return" is a surprising blot upon the countryside near the mountain village of Krawedz and though the superstitious country folk in these remote hinterlands take great stock in the bans and taboos of their forebears, there are always youths who dare and double-dare and double-dog-dare each other to steal away during chores and trek the lonely miles across the Pawelowicz farm into the shadow of the Grand Blue Pine, where a small rocky path cut by centuries of icemelt winds its way to the top of a hill from which no villager of Krawedz -- or elsewhere -- has ever returned.</div><div>In truth, an artifact from the world before, the aforementioned anasysnchron, a steel-colored obelisk that writhes with symbols that defy any attempt to decipher their meaning nonetheless the meaning is simply <i>known </i>by the perceiver. The meaning reaches outward from the anasynchron, tugging at the mind, the self, ultimately the body itself as it creatively re-aligns the perceiver's being to attune not to his home plane, but rather to the Ethereal Plane. </div><div>The anasynchron offers no method of return from the Ethereal Plane, but, should the players be inventive enough, be repaired to return to its proper function as a "transynchron," allowing travel back and forth to and from the Ethereal Plane. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-64001270078075111562023-06-30T17:46:00.002-04:002023-07-01T12:01:17.556-04:00The Old Ways -- A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam for Cairn RPG<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFiSwJFB-S_Fms2Wb-NMVhI6RE5eTAHuymiI1wCx-AFGuTZMu64d1-Cx4YJ5ptuQWXt34vwSigcUcaan73r_Fq5f8oVXGv1A2iNnI1ip3chdTSiVN10AvgOU-hjNx5-NNi8sqrITahKoQUEdTKi4hOmS6t5ByglG4ffHtYW5o-6ZkAOroL_Bju1nZt7HE/s640/1%20-%20the%20Witching%20Wood%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20Mixe.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFiSwJFB-S_Fms2Wb-NMVhI6RE5eTAHuymiI1wCx-AFGuTZMu64d1-Cx4YJ5ptuQWXt34vwSigcUcaan73r_Fq5f8oVXGv1A2iNnI1ip3chdTSiVN10AvgOU-hjNx5-NNi8sqrITahKoQUEdTKi4hOmS6t5ByglG4ffHtYW5o-6ZkAOroL_Bju1nZt7HE/s320/1%20-%20the%20Witching%20Wood%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20Mixe.png" width="256" /></a></div>My friend <a href="https://www.crabdominion.com" target="_blank">Crab Dominion</a> informed me of the <a href="https://itch.io/jam/a-town-a-forest-a-dungeon" target="_blank">A Town, A Forest, A Dungeon Jam for the Cairn RPG over on Itch.io</a> a while back and I meant to do something for it, but I wasn't really inspired until today. I was a little afraid that the Jam was just for the month of June, but no! As of today, the last day of June, there are still four days left in the jam! Just enough for me to crank out a completely unedited, unplaytested and unrevised bit of my own rpg chicanery. <p></p><p>I've been thinking about how I'd want to write the thing I'm (as of this afternoon) writing for it, and much of what I want to do feels based on work I've already done for this or that campaign over the years. Specifically, much of the lore of what I'm writing is based on the two-year campaign I ran for coworkers during the pandemic. I'm leaning a little harder on the Slavic (well, Polish) folklore that inspired that campaign and writing around some of the prefab material that had initially populated that campaign. </p><p>The result is In The Witching Wood, and if everything goes according to plan, it'll be on my Itch page before the 4th of July. I've written most of the background, so from here on in, it's hexmap, key, some new procedures, dungeon, key, then village, key. Spend like two minutes laying it out and then I'll put the fucker up on Itch.io. Here's a little taste of the module so far:</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Old Ways</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijD1KuUIK9X_f8UC7FMpVCRBdrNHS-LwU5B7Ih5LoQL5Heb55OHnmiRkMbrxXbRmAWaEvmrcFblNLcKrrGSrOWwUfkBjRw1DBzmiK1eLM5zeqTo2JNNWYE4XFWj33ypzxOTix0rpTeqJPBN8TaVsx_3K4vrAzst5ahJBWXuPCWoTtAqj12rcGEo6iA2zc/s640/2%20-%20the%20Witching%20Wood%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20Mixe.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijD1KuUIK9X_f8UC7FMpVCRBdrNHS-LwU5B7Ih5LoQL5Heb55OHnmiRkMbrxXbRmAWaEvmrcFblNLcKrrGSrOWwUfkBjRw1DBzmiK1eLM5zeqTo2JNNWYE4XFWj33ypzxOTix0rpTeqJPBN8TaVsx_3K4vrAzst5ahJBWXuPCWoTtAqj12rcGEo6iA2zc/s320/2%20-%20the%20Witching%20Wood%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20Moebius%20Mixe.png" width="256" /></a></div>If we cannot say when the War began, neither can we begin to fathom when the Old Ways did. When the first humans, dwarves and halflings fled the War into the Hinterlands, the Old Ways were already here. The Old Ways are the laws and strictures set down at the Dawn Times, sacrosanct to the barbarian elves, held dear by races older than Man, and foundation of the superstitions that haunt the Hinterlands. The Old Ways are not — and cannot be — codified; they change from time to time through unpredictable happenstance and whim of powers beyond the ken of mere mortals.<p></p><p>At the outset of this adventure, the game runner shall ask the adventurers to complete the following superstitions:</p><p>Before crossing a bridge, one must…</p><p>Upon meeting a witch, it is proper to…</p><p>When invited into a home, a gracious visitor should…</p><p>When meeting a stranger, protect yourself from curses and fairy tricks by…</p><p>To show thanks to the gods, it is right to…</p><p>At the Vernal Equinox, proffer … as a sacrifice lest …</p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-44242619163009223552023-06-27T10:00:00.057-04:002023-06-30T09:56:23.048-04:00The Euphoria Garden -- Warpland RPG<h1 style="text-align: left;">The Euphoria Garden</h1><div>A dangerous adventure location for the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG</a>.*</div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Description</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEircz1dS3qqwSgdL060S_u4Uq8SU104LVA1oXXk0vhbPWo_e_BVUMUC2B-hNTpG9Zvwfkr5Pbhj59dFa_UXE6v0-_Rcmb4NC_HSkvBPwFJ9HhQOVnHDfHS1HvGnw-6W5G-kU4jBTdBrBipgfN2zmEPb4tbi-AdDEFvLA3GYPIEyrfOIzoizIy9a0kf9" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqjASDyBnabi2jr4i4vmTB4oDk-wA59RTj753h70nU82cvdWizbU_cTr1-hGWjx8Dhf8urY145TvKUKr0ktvCvzdyQJvR9sjZ96wwo2pjCJe0uPtluZMNctvrsP62NpKm08fMEtz7uIb4xmo9v1yf2Rff3S6uX-UH8UMKq44-bst915Rq-qvOdqtfV" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhqjASDyBnabi2jr4i4vmTB4oDk-wA59RTj753h70nU82cvdWizbU_cTr1-hGWjx8Dhf8urY145TvKUKr0ktvCvzdyQJvR9sjZ96wwo2pjCJe0uPtluZMNctvrsP62NpKm08fMEtz7uIb4xmo9v1yf2Rff3S6uX-UH8UMKq44-bst915Rq-qvOdqtfV=w232-h232" width="232" /></a></div>Even in the bleak lifelessness of Obsidia, nature continues to find a way. Pockets of volcanic rock and ash have led one particular valley to be lush and verdant, teeming with plant life. Life won so sorely is cherished very dearly and this garden has found new ways of nourishing itself. An array of exotic flowers and vines fill the air here with heavy, wet, sweet-fragranced pollens, the mere touch of which on bear skin can produce a mild numbness. Inhaling these soporific pollens induces euphoria and a dream-like trance, making one capable of little more than contemplating the vibrant colors of the leaves, petals and fruits of the garden. Warlocks, it is said, will pay many gold rings for samples of the flowers and fruits of the garden, though none who claim first-hand experience of the place dare return: all tell tales of the Mindbloom; and though all know of it, few accounts agree on more than their dreadful nature and fierce stewardship of the garden. <p></p><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Rumor</h2><p>“An otherworldly garden blooms with exotic flora that exude euphoria-inducing scents and radiates vibrant colors. Partaking in the garden's nectar grants temporary enlightenment and heightened awareness.” </p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTq-w8xI1udbxYGnMg4U9nm_RBZepUq2DbSLOtxpumM9ZY-1MfaUCBIIJBk9m2NGP04CS83BLYrl6fWfmShZGanMnYtxx5TUF_3-f6TlhwUKrrLl9GMfLSSGs_rS0vBMbGEDRxrdwFMVi5I-w3jiFep7JVddawrD9Bu0PNlrJIsnAIWH2xiUUKHjPi" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTq-w8xI1udbxYGnMg4U9nm_RBZepUq2DbSLOtxpumM9ZY-1MfaUCBIIJBk9m2NGP04CS83BLYrl6fWfmShZGanMnYtxx5TUF_3-f6TlhwUKrrLl9GMfLSSGs_rS0vBMbGEDRxrdwFMVi5I-w3jiFep7JVddawrD9Bu0PNlrJIsnAIWH2xiUUKHjPi" width="240" /></a></div>Threat</h2><p>The garden is fiercely protected by the Mindbloom, sentient plant creatures with telepathic abilities. They can manipulate perceptions and project vivid hallucinations to ensnare intruders. Trespassers risk becoming lost in a euphoric haze and falling victim to the Mindbloom’s hypnotic control, doomed to a slow death from starvation, their decaying bodies returning to the soil, nourishing the garden, their psyches ensuring the potency of the hallucinogens and euphorics of the plants.</p><p><i>*If you've enjoyed this or any other of my <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG</a> content, please consider using the affiliate links in this article to tsupport this site. </i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-22707488993742631192023-06-22T08:49:00.003-04:002023-06-30T10:00:12.372-04:00Dead Horse Mag #1 & Origins Game Fair '23<h2 style="text-align: left;">Dead Horse Mag #1 -- Available for Pre-Order!</h2><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIRYCHNEhG8t5TvhObZpdqpMUl0TIUZgKS4ediZ40O0bNBQAWCRUptF7osfuy85oyptfldwXCni6iE1JbVFQnwLiKasqKkYKRV0b1967po0Gvx0-Td6ftaGmjEQ8ImObHD-DUhTL4DK3XALWaghmZhUSBc-PDwIXahFfr84rk7FioXeR8bhV8ZwAKoMNE/s3072/InShot_20230622_083706044.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="3072" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIRYCHNEhG8t5TvhObZpdqpMUl0TIUZgKS4ediZ40O0bNBQAWCRUptF7osfuy85oyptfldwXCni6iE1JbVFQnwLiKasqKkYKRV0b1967po0Gvx0-Td6ftaGmjEQ8ImObHD-DUhTL4DK3XALWaghmZhUSBc-PDwIXahFfr84rk7FioXeR8bhV8ZwAKoMNE/s320/InShot_20230622_083706044.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div>Back in March or April, Kirby from <a href="https://disastertourism.games/" target="_blank">Disaster Tourism</a> invited me to submit an article for the Dead Horse Magazine that they and Christian Sorrel of <a href="http://meatcastlegameware.com/" target="_blank">Meat Castle Gameware</a> were putting together. Long story short, it's ready and up for pre-orders! Dead Horse is a horror-themed RPG magazine with material from creators across the RPG spectrum, including myself and Crab Dominion. Thankfully, Kirby & Christian kinda let me do my own thing, so I bring the literary absurdism to the issue's theme of Unsettling horror.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://disastertourism.games/products/dead-horse-001?utm_source=DFKblog&utm_medium=post" target="_blank">Pre-Order Dead Horse #1 now</a> for only $20!</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Origins Game Fair '23</h2><div>I live in South Haven, Michigan and none of my regular players live anywhere near me.</div><div>James MacGeorge lives near Pittsburgh, PA.</div><div>James Smith & John Wickett live near Cincinnati, OH. </div><div>Michael lives in Dallas, TX. </div><div>Jerry lives in Mexico City. </div><div>Slacker lives in Maine somewhere. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are echoes of the early days of the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad campaign here. </div><div><br /></div><div>I lived in Ypsilanti, MI.</div><div>Edgar lives in GA.</div><div>Wayne lives in VA.</div><div>Bear lived in IL.</div><div>James MacGeorge lived in TX.</div><div>Gabriel lives in Monte Video, Uruguay. </div><div><br /></div><div>You get the idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>But back in 2014, the Metal Gods guys (well, most of us) met at GenCon. For most of us, it was the first time meeting in person. The event was legendary. </div><div><br /></div><div>Pandemic, breakdown of the social fabric, inability to go to cons for a few years and major life changes all happen.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then James MacGeorge asked me: "Hey, do you feel like going to Origins this year?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Origins is in Columbus, OH, which is a decent midway point (with a bit of a detour) from both of us. You know who else can make it? Our friends from Cincy. And then there are all of our Con Rat friends like Doug Kovacs who are going to be there anyway. Oh, and Columbus seems to have a decent zoo, so there's stuff for the fam to do during the day (since all of the best gaming is after-hours, off-the-books gaming). </div><div><br /></div><div>So we're going to Origins this year. Well, tomorrow. </div><div><br /></div><div>Hit me up if you're there and want to hang out!</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-81104069490521254882023-06-20T10:00:00.002-04:002023-06-30T09:59:25.743-04:00Dungeon GUILD Level Two - Part One: Basic Details<p><i>My Dungeon GUILD project merges the procedural generation found in <a href="https://happyjak.games/" target="_blank">Happy Jak Games</a>'s <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/438404/WYRD-Dungeon?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">Wyrd Dungeon</a> with the character & gear systems from <a href="https://disastertourism.games/" target="_blank">Disaster Tourism</a>'s <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/369449/GUILD-Sword-and-Magick-for-Hire?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">GUILD: Sword & Magick for Hire</a> to create a game that's fun for my seven-year-old to play but can still engage the rest of the family. In the end, it kind of plays like Minecraft Dungeon the TTRPG. </i></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oDgK6NSINQ9a3Ux_58unWbSQRkmc6uANlYYx66wvByMGSoFtm_keDPvsgV44VaZcSdjiongnIIGdfUc9s_rYSNTFt7FT5jqK2xKtDLohBGmhtwRcJzDrs9LCf9m7Vxs_qoQqeF4AX3j6MS6KOYMDcMvTruo3_ErOD2yMduz--7LyNkmwAnKawpBF/s4096/InShot_20230616_121812177.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2302" data-original-width="4096" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oDgK6NSINQ9a3Ux_58unWbSQRkmc6uANlYYx66wvByMGSoFtm_keDPvsgV44VaZcSdjiongnIIGdfUc9s_rYSNTFt7FT5jqK2xKtDLohBGmhtwRcJzDrs9LCf9m7Vxs_qoQqeF4AX3j6MS6KOYMDcMvTruo3_ErOD2yMduz--7LyNkmwAnKawpBF/w640-h360/InShot_20230616_121812177.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Procedure</h2><p><b>Step One</b>: roll for Factions Occuring (d6 table, Wyrd Dungeon, p25). </p><p><b>Step Two</b>: roll for Level Name (d66 tables, Wyrd Dungeon, p26-7)</p><p><b>Step Three</b>: roll for Traps (2d6 table, Wyrd Dungeon, p30 - or Ld3-L roll); roll for each individual trap (d66, Wyrd Dungeon, p29)</p><p><b>Step Four</b>: roll for Trappings (d66 table, Wyrd Dungeon, p28) - I roll once per level for a detail I can throw in somewhere to create a setpiece encounter</p><p><b>Step Five</b>: roll for Treasures (Ld3-L); roll for each individual treasure (options for charts include Treasures table, Wyrd Dungeon, p33, Magic Items table, WD p 34, etc.) and place as is most interesting. </p><p><b>Step Six</b>: roll for Monsters - for each room roll once on d66 table Enemy Examples (WD p18) or More Enemies (WD p36); just record the details for this table for now, we'll get stats later. There's nothing wrong with skipping monsters in a room if there's a trap. </p><p><b>Step Seven</b>: distribute results amongst the number of rooms for that level (L+4)</p><p><b>Next Steps</b>: There's a lot of stuff unfinished here. This is as far as we're getting today, though.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Factions</h2><p>In the as-yet-unnamed megadungeon that's home to the Dungeon GUILD campaign, there are a series of factions who may or may not be present in each level. Wyrd Dungeon suggests a number of dungeon factions equal to the number of players in the campaign, plus one. The five factions in play in the dungeon are:</p><p>The Iron Glaives | The League of the Last Rites | Ones from Beyond the Heavens | the Cult of the Ninth Hand | The Light Foots</p><p>I don't have too many details on each of these factions, beyond the fact that every faction except the Iron Glaives are at war with the Light Foots, and even the Iron Glaives have only a tense alliance with the Light Foots. But, after rolling on a chart to determine how many rooms are occupied by members of each faction, only the Light Foots appear on level 2 (the occupy 3 rooms), so we will only worry about them at this point. However, I know very little about the Light Foot faction beyond their name, but we know they are present in 3 separate rooms in this level, so we'll talk more about them next time.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Dungeon Level Name</h2><p>I'm really happy with what we rolled here: "The Silent Gatehouse." Whatever encounter we place there, silence is obviously going to have to be key. We're going to leave this as-is for now and move on.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Traps & Treasures</h2><p>On the first level, we rolled a TON of traps. For just five rooms, I'm pretty sure we have four traps, and that really felt like too many. Instead, I rolled Ld3-3 for the number of traps as well as the number of treasures and ended up with 2 traps and 1 treasure. Treasure is not so common on this level as it was on Level 1, so it needs to be something very valuable that the players can use right away. For now, I just noted which rooms I thought should have traps on a map key numbered 1-6 (the number of rooms on this level) and came back later to fill in the types of trap.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Trappings</h2><p>Okay, one roll and it'll tell me something I have to use somewhere on this dungeon level, no big deal. "Lava pools?" Wow. That's got a lot of flavor. I think the run-up to the Silent Gatehouse will have to include lots of these. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Monsters</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyAOXqC-rJJBjh9llimfYD0F8bOeCydfP6TPcsuJrryGzdUaFlxQWBTSsH4oQXi7Bx69R771z-p57CNNNTdptlJk1HE3sy9KuwN9wZ2wJDCVxxx-g2Gw-yPLC3HNjDygg3rnWxujl1RXW_eDhSakKeoXd7c_QQ_sX4Iu3j36ATRjhGNr2F562Zt4h/s512/3%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20riveting%20sphinx%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20M.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="The riveting sphinx lounges before the silent gatehouse guild rpg wyrd dungeon" border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtyAOXqC-rJJBjh9llimfYD0F8bOeCydfP6TPcsuJrryGzdUaFlxQWBTSsH4oQXi7Bx69R771z-p57CNNNTdptlJk1HE3sy9KuwN9wZ2wJDCVxxx-g2Gw-yPLC3HNjDygg3rnWxujl1RXW_eDhSakKeoXd7c_QQ_sX4Iu3j36ATRjhGNr2F562Zt4h/w320-h320/3%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20riveting%20sphinx%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20M.png" title="The Riveting Sphinx" width="320" /></a></div><br />Okay, we're having some fun now. Due to the way I want this game to feel (namely, less roleplaying and more smashing), I want an encounter in every room. However, I decided earlier to put the level's 1 treasure in a room with a trap. I've decided that this trap is going to be a big deal since the treasure is going to be as well, so I don't want a monster here, so I roll up 5 monster encounters, all drawn from the "More Enemies" table on page 36. Here are the encounters that we rolled up:<p></p><p>Room 1 - Metallic furballs</p><p>Room 2 - Enchanted dwarves</p><p>Room 3 - Killer salamander</p><p>Room 4 - Flayed nightmares</p><p>Room 6 - Riveting sphinx</p><p>Some fun stuff here: the killer salamander immediately invokes a connection with the lava pools we rolled up as dungeon trappings, so we're going to connect those two. Also, the riveting sphinx ended up in Room 6, which I've already planned will be the exit from the level (I just do that; Room 1 is entrance, the ultimate room is the exit). I love that this room has a sphinx in it because I love riddles and puzzles in dungeons; having a relatively high-stakes non-combat encounter at this point seems like a fantastic change of pace! Further, since the level is the SILENT Gatehouse, I think that the riveting sphinx won't talk during the riddling content and maybe the PCs lose if they talk, too. We'll see.</p><p><i>Next time, we'll go through the steps that I take to flesh out the rest of this level and we'll draw a map!</i></p><p><i>*This post contains affiliate links. </i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-51409207994424727892023-06-17T14:32:00.002-04:002023-06-17T14:32:37.037-04:00Weekend Monster Sketches<p> Today, my daughter and I were drawing at the dinner table and I posted the results to Instagram and figured "why no blog?" </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgve9AkdLoyhX_d5py7I1vFmfw07nphqh7k_v7WlItkL6wBBWhYMCDGR4cnUslSm2c-8UodB-wL6Jk89gG4x02bQZaJJADpb_FWrbnEJ0A_bDPwfJn9zk2beQqTlM6E48IJEwaxK2ZWeQFYtcmleLv6tHVTefRvAuCSCPK4iS8ci7-re-1WsidPNI8h/s872/IMG_20230617_124839_993.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="872" data-original-width="872" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgve9AkdLoyhX_d5py7I1vFmfw07nphqh7k_v7WlItkL6wBBWhYMCDGR4cnUslSm2c-8UodB-wL6Jk89gG4x02bQZaJJADpb_FWrbnEJ0A_bDPwfJn9zk2beQqTlM6E48IJEwaxK2ZWeQFYtcmleLv6tHVTefRvAuCSCPK4iS8ci7-re-1WsidPNI8h/w400-h400/IMG_20230617_124839_993.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>For this first piece, my daughter told me to draw an "eyelash monster" and this is what happened. I just watched the Tom Baker Doctor Who episode "The Invisible Enemy," and I was definitely inspired by that. I liked the idea of the eyelashes themselves being the monster, some sort of parasitic infection, I think.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdo0c00AtC-xc4qBQi-h2i1g9u3gC9ZyNiPgByiz3XX8_NzapdN_IIRRbW1j2u987ZBEsC9vAnA9cQjcjUb2vYi_bLH7Uq5pK8qKk1ENmcosaaMUVzoGWD-udYT8cRD1ulyA2s7cvfTqP3w4XP2y6YfHJM9BRKZG_ov7hyCJEik_xyp-mUkCNLeddp/s1077/IMG_20230617_125641_575.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1077" data-original-width="1077" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdo0c00AtC-xc4qBQi-h2i1g9u3gC9ZyNiPgByiz3XX8_NzapdN_IIRRbW1j2u987ZBEsC9vAnA9cQjcjUb2vYi_bLH7Uq5pK8qKk1ENmcosaaMUVzoGWD-udYT8cRD1ulyA2s7cvfTqP3w4XP2y6YfHJM9BRKZG_ov7hyCJEik_xyp-mUkCNLeddp/w400-h400/IMG_20230617_125641_575.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>For this pic, I accepted my daughter's suggestions on what was wrong with the first drawing. It needed a mouth and big hair and hands with three fingers and feet with two toes. Unfortunately, I missed the very important instruction that it be wearing a skirt, but she liked it well enough regardless.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG7Z_QP7nVtgNyXZk_ott0ivT8mGhnT3S_oTfIenWPQsOf-X4y2R-7exvMgAbp0jaeNTJiyPnfwH07vjZZBoICyP86kOQQjHkvZEoub7f2rUAruw1bXlVJl62h0wSKgQR2Q2ERI3tmoGSojlB4lWTL1HELgDoOUb872sqdb-dhRPput-GmVU3HF3wX/s1080/IMG_20230617_131526_987.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG7Z_QP7nVtgNyXZk_ott0ivT8mGhnT3S_oTfIenWPQsOf-X4y2R-7exvMgAbp0jaeNTJiyPnfwH07vjZZBoICyP86kOQQjHkvZEoub7f2rUAruw1bXlVJl62h0wSKgQR2Q2ERI3tmoGSojlB4lWTL1HELgDoOUb872sqdb-dhRPput-GmVU3HF3wX/w400-h400/IMG_20230617_131526_987.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div>This last one was a pic I started for the "Killer Salamander" in the Guild DUNGEON, Level 2, Room 3. I couldn't think of how to draw a normal adult salamander, but I could picture an axolotl, so I went that direction, using flames for the gill structures to either side of its head. I started to lose interest after I had so much fun on the face, so I kind of phoned in the rest of the pic, but after I drew the tiny legs, I decided that an important detail of the Killer Salamander encounter is that the salamander is regrowing its legs (which I think should be on the ground in front of him), so he doesn't have the mobility he normally would have. This ties in nicely with another feature of that room that will force the players to make a difficult choice.</div><div><br /><p><br /></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-25940501248516248162023-06-13T10:00:00.002-04:002023-06-30T09:59:01.285-04:00Dungeon GUILD Session One Post-Mortem + Joesky Tax<p> In my last post, I talked about the "Dungeon GUILD" game I was starting with my family by marrying the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/369449/GUILD-Sword-and-Magick-for-Hire?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">GUILD: Sword & Magic for Hire</a> rules by <a href="https://disastertourism.games/" target="_blank">Disaster Tourism</a> with the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/438404/WYRD-Dungeon?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">Wyrd Dungeon</a> rules by <a href="https://happyjak.games/" target="_blank">Happy Jak Games</a>. This was pretty easy to do because the 2 games share DNA in the Wyrd Engine (also by Disaster Tourism). On Sunday, we finally got the game to the table. We had to make a few changes, but it was a pretty rousing success; everyone had a good time (or at least said they did) and we managed to play a short game session that delivered on the things we planned to deliver on in a concise, tight format where the only person who got bored at all was the 3-year-old. </p><p>I mean really, we all knew that was going to happen, right?</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Character Creation</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62byiZp6caLeUGcqznyrpGCn_7ZOJnIlxA7_ojqzIC8ZsQXAuZRv5SGGouRFOMkBrc4LEaPbQccZUv4UnpreNcWqO_NjBcNNtEk1ZKusMd3wRpxOxboG9mZX0d1nmYdHwe8jLTuEsPNoDWE-SItTpmGiOLzeD8-bE5a4eggR9Viv5xfbatii3AEE7/s4080/2023-06-12_14-29-26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="GUILD RPG character sheets" border="0" data-original-height="4080" data-original-width="2296" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi62byiZp6caLeUGcqznyrpGCn_7ZOJnIlxA7_ojqzIC8ZsQXAuZRv5SGGouRFOMkBrc4LEaPbQccZUv4UnpreNcWqO_NjBcNNtEk1ZKusMd3wRpxOxboG9mZX0d1nmYdHwe8jLTuEsPNoDWE-SItTpmGiOLzeD8-bE5a4eggR9Viv5xfbatii3AEE7/w225-h400/2023-06-12_14-29-26.jpg" title="GUILD RPG character sheets" width="225" /></a></div><br />My son & I had already made characters, but some changes between the early rules draft and the final game meant we had to move a couple of details around, but no big deal. One of my favorite changes from the early draft we had been using and the release version of GUILD: your motivation for joining the titular GUILD provides you with a unique situational benefit. We managed to stack these benefits in a very useful way. For example, my daughter's character was motivated by loot, so every time she opened a chest, it had 2 additional gold coins in it. Since we had predetermined that each encounter had a chest containing 1 gp worth of treasure at its end, this tripled the output of dungeon, which worked out really well. The other benefits (when we remembered to use them) were just as useful and we loved them. It felt like a good balance to have 2 people (my wife and me) motivated by Guts (and getting a bonus to our first attack roll every combat), 1 by Gold, and one more by Glory (faster in-GUILD leveling). <p></p><p>My favorite part of character creation, though, was when the kids came up with their characters' spells. Neither my wife nor I had rolled spellcaster-y types, but both of the kiddos did. Our 7-year-old son had previously invented the spells "Bloody Dreams" (a very gory <i>sleep</i> spell that causes gory nightmares) and "Fingergun" (no explanation necessary), whereas the three-year-old invented "Big Hugs" (provides the target with hug armor and my daughter goes to give you a hug, so, like, be seriously jealous of the recipient of Big Hugs) and "Sparkle Razzle Dazzle" (which didn't do much, but hearing her say "Sparkle Razzle Dazzle" was worth the price of admission.</p><p>In the end, our characters were a joyful mishmash of cruddy goofs who we did our best to kill off. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Gameplay</h2><p>I wanted game play to be very loose for Dungeon GUILD. Really, I didn't want to push too many of the heavy RP elements of a lot of the games that I play as I've previously found these are a big turn off for the way my son approaches gaming. Rather than insist on a "one true way," I figured it was a lot better idea to meet him where he lives, so instead I decided to make the game feel like a lot of the games he's played and enjoyed. This meant that Dungeon GUILD was going to end up more Minecraft Dungeon than my beloved BX and I was going to just have to be okay with it.</p><p>To facilitate play, we used dry-erase maps and minis (Reaper Dungeon Denizens were perfect for this experience!) and a dice tray to keep errant dice under control. Teaching my son how to read a d6 as a d3 or any even-sided die as a d2 took a moment, but he was on board by the end. The one thing that complicated play was the occasional necessity to recalculate Aptitude. Aptitude is your Loadout (how much gear you carry) minus your relevant Attribute (Might, Agility or Mind) and this total is added to your d20 roll when accomplishing things. For starting characters, this means that most of your Aptitudes will be positive and apply as a penalty. Every time your Loadout changes -- which is to say, every time you change your gear, either gaining something new or losing something old -- your Aptitudes are likely to change. </p><p>Thankfully, my wife and I were the only people who faced that problem, but it might have been a little clunky for the boyo to manage. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Dungeon</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdHqHtqansP8axiq8Fxz7i56B3fzxcTw-LlaVDH6gXh0Id7OQrEDoPsiEltFfBIcg0_Nob1tgvezXsDabXUbpZnEyUkBBjn34b_UetLiutfs_aCURX-I_3tn4J0xEOPIqtM8tBMA-kr63vgmU6MdrjymRjYhcztH-jGTEToOJv1Dth50EeIO412Hc/s4080/2023-06-12_14-30-07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Wyrd Dungeon-generated Dungeon Level" border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdHqHtqansP8axiq8Fxz7i56B3fzxcTw-LlaVDH6gXh0Id7OQrEDoPsiEltFfBIcg0_Nob1tgvezXsDabXUbpZnEyUkBBjn34b_UetLiutfs_aCURX-I_3tn4J0xEOPIqtM8tBMA-kr63vgmU6MdrjymRjYhcztH-jGTEToOJv1Dth50EeIO412Hc/w400-h225/2023-06-12_14-30-07.jpg" title="Cave of the Forgotten via Wyrd Dungeon" width="400" /></a></div><br />I had created the first level of our procedurally-generated dungeon last Wednesday, using the generators and rubrics found in Jeff's amazing Wyrd Dungeon. Jeff has created a seriously good series of tables and general principles for procedurally-generating a dungeon that that's all the Dungeon GUILD game is going to be: level after level of p-gen dungeon. I determined what would be in the dungeon level using Wyrd Dungeon and I was very happy with the results. There were a few things that we left unwritten in those rules, however, and I found my own solution: Ld3-L; which is to say "roll a number of d3s equal to the dungeon level, then subtract the dungeon level from the total." This gives a neat little curve where the median of the range is the dungeon level (in this case, "1"), "0" is a real option but so, too are relatively large amounts. I used this dice expression to decide how many Traps were present on the dungeon level, how many treasures, etc. Everything that Jeff's rules didn't expressly tell me how many times I should use, I used this rubric.<p></p><p>The first level of our p-gen dungeon is The Cave of the Forgotten and the Dungeon GUILDers mission was to find the golden dog statue (was the dog forgotten? Just its statue? If I ever write this up, this would be worth exploring) at the end of the level as well as the stairs down to Level 2. I treated this dungeon as more of a railroad-ish point crawl (since the goal is just to find the treasure and get to the next level, I didn't need to worry about properly Jaquaying the dungeon), but that's in line with the more video-game-esque play style that we were going for. None of the factions that I had rolled up have any presence in the Cave of the Forgotten, but we did face sickly zombies, a wandering undead knight, some secretive kobolds and an ancient battered living statue. </p><p>Somehow, despite our best efforts, we all survived to delve again. </p><p>On Wednesday, it'll be time to design dungeon level 2, hopefully in advance of a Father's Day gaming session.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Joesky Tax: The Psychic Orb Trap for Wyrd Dungeon & GUILD</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlKTJ40_CgGnQOk6Iw7sYedMRe3VeqQA3Cw3i1kHQi11GQvFiwqweP4sJW4S24ajNZXgxcZ8yWhE8ncJ7GlnKUX0YHfYXLOCylo_FOoULQSI9kiaF4rsxlucINvLO40VAg6gSowRqaBfD9Nj6Jzir3C1eU0qFh2YMp-nWRxbUsoQLEkirNSVZu-jhs/s512/3%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20psychic%20orb%20trap%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Wyrd Dungeon trap" border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlKTJ40_CgGnQOk6Iw7sYedMRe3VeqQA3Cw3i1kHQi11GQvFiwqweP4sJW4S24ajNZXgxcZ8yWhE8ncJ7GlnKUX0YHfYXLOCylo_FOoULQSI9kiaF4rsxlucINvLO40VAg6gSowRqaBfD9Nj6Jzir3C1eU0qFh2YMp-nWRxbUsoQLEkirNSVZu-jhs/w320-h320/3%20-%20A%20Far-Future%20psychic%20orb%20trap%20In%20The%20Style%20Of%20.png" title="Psychic Orb Trap" width="320" /></a></div><br />As the adventurers begin to draw close to the room, they feel as much as hear a sickening, metallic humming at the base of their own skulls. The humming shoots lances of pain like fault lines up the adventurers' necks, into their brains, making it impossible to concentrate. Make a successful Average test to drive the humming -- really, a buzzing now, and getting much louder -- out of your brain before -- IT JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE -- you start having trouble paying attention to things and even -- OMG WHY WON'T IT JUST SHUT UP -- make it hard to do any -- //SCREAMS// //AGONY// -- thing. Adventurers who fail the test subtract 1d3 from any dice rolls for damage or degree (such as rolls based on Essence). <p></p><p><i>*This post contains affiliate links.</i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-14981074414615100292023-06-08T10:00:00.005-04:002023-06-30T09:58:34.876-04:00The Dungeon GUILD -- GUILD RPG & Wyrd Dungeon At The Same Time <i>Today, I accidentally started the project of using <a href="https://happyjak.games/?utm_source=DFK&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=precoop" target="_blank">Happy Jak Games'</a>s <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/438404/WYRD-Dungeon?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">Wyrd Dungeon RPG</a> as the procedural dungeon generator for a <a href="https://guildrpg.quest/?utm_source=DFK&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=coop" target="_blank">GUILD: Sword & Magick For Hire </a>campaign with my 7-year-old son, and we're just going to run with it. Both games are based on the <a href="https://disastertourism.itch.io/wyrd?utm_source=DFK&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=coop" target="_blank">Wyrd Engine</a> by <a href="https://disastertourism.games/?utm_source=DFK&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=coop" target="_blank">Disaster Tourism Games</a>, so they're eminently compatible, they just need a few stitches to hold them together. Here's my pattern.</i><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7OGuPXymfpmhRkMKODP-fHBkw_oEdpsx4Cdf1iwQ_LEht8UUfxAS2WFr0MTBQ_7lhb9RY_Vj-OIIQ4Dl9UqMCWKXATrsa9k8nM8x-jXg33kUeHrAWKbcj_pdkNnlUJmxx74_i5HTErK8T46Qu3md2BYUb9BtS2q9THzgtbUxHqJx0E8rI1yd618Mw/s1272/wyrd_dungeon.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1272" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7OGuPXymfpmhRkMKODP-fHBkw_oEdpsx4Cdf1iwQ_LEht8UUfxAS2WFr0MTBQ_7lhb9RY_Vj-OIIQ4Dl9UqMCWKXATrsa9k8nM8x-jXg33kUeHrAWKbcj_pdkNnlUJmxx74_i5HTErK8T46Qu3md2BYUb9BtS2q9THzgtbUxHqJx0E8rI1yd618Mw/s320/wyrd_dungeon.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><br />Design Goals</h2><div>My big goal with this campaign is to introduce my son to basic concepts of roleplaying games and have a good time with him. This means that the campaign might have to lean more on the "game" part of RPG and a little less on the "role-playing" side. Frankly, it's okay if this game feels like a video game. I want my son -- eventually at least -- to get involved with the dungeon creation, so using a procedural, GMless engine like Wyrd Dungeon is going to help a lot on that front; we can practice balancing the dungeon together and will design challenges that we both want to see, which I really wish I had had the opportunity to do when I was coming up. Many of the subsystems in GUILD support this style of play as well; lots of details exist in a kind of quantum limbo and are rolled for only when needed, which saves a lot of planning time and keeps things interesting. </div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo0TzDcnH0f4FWjekQrLQhuWB1VySHCvFA98GWP0WZPqc1w9Dtl3u_hnLM8ToVSN1-8UVwk8EKFyxnKn_7o5-94x5eGXCH1hAFGWeSwB7I41RA_Hl2z0RAAYAg78TlCd6BWyhfALn4MCgGelhmBzGm1-ib-_67iGzeqiv97d--ABzz-8B-ub8L0tfr/s816/guild_sword+and_magick_for_hire_rpg.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="650" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo0TzDcnH0f4FWjekQrLQhuWB1VySHCvFA98GWP0WZPqc1w9Dtl3u_hnLM8ToVSN1-8UVwk8EKFyxnKn_7o5-94x5eGXCH1hAFGWeSwB7I41RA_Hl2z0RAAYAg78TlCd6BWyhfALn4MCgGelhmBzGm1-ib-_67iGzeqiv97d--ABzz-8B-ub8L0tfr/s320/guild_sword+and_magick_for_hire_rpg.png" width="255" /></a></div><br />Play Goals</h2><div>I want to be able to sit down at the table with my son -- possibly joined by my wife and daughter as well -- and play through a short(ish) dungeon crawl in one session. At the end of that session, you get whatever rewards and make any character changes, buy gear, handle downtime, etc., that make sense. The goal of each session will be to "complete" the level of the dungeon, which is done by finding the exit to the next level; once you've found that exit, the session is over, you get a reward and make your next moves. When the next session rolls around, the group will start at the new level they've discovered the exit to in the previous session. Yeah, it's basically going to be Minecraft Dungeon the RPG. I've made peace with that. </div><h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Rule Seeds</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Here are the rules that I've been toying with so far: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ul><li><b>Loot the Room</b>: each room contains 1gp per dungeon level in general loot. Since there is no XP in the Wyrd Engine, this allows measured advancement for overcoming the challenge of encounters or bypassing them but still looting the room.</li><li><b>Treasure</b>: each dungeon level will contain Level d3 - Level (ie, Level 1 is d3-1, Level 3 is 3d3-3 and so on) treasures distributed as evenly as possible across the rooms, preferring Exit rooms. </li><li><b>Guild Gear</b>: between levels, generate a list of weapons & armor available from the Guild. I need a method for this that isn't too wild. </li><li><b>Traps</b>: Each dungeon level will have a number of traps determined by the number of rooms in the level. There'll be a chart for this, but I have a rubric. Level 1: 1d6-1 traps. Level 2: 1d8-1 traps. Level 3: 1d10-1 traps, etc. This may move to the Level*d3-Level model used above after some testing. </li><li><b>Encounters</b>: Every room gets an encounter. They do not have to be combat encounters. </li></ul></div><i>Next time, I'll look a little more closely at the procedural generation rules and the specific steps I'm using to build each level of the dungeon!</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>*This post contains affiliate links. </i><br /><div><br /><br /></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-78089929496136395972023-06-01T15:11:00.005-04:002023-06-30T09:56:01.112-04:00Three Technocratic Artifacts for the WARPLAND RPG<h1 style="text-align: left;">Three Technocratic Artifacts for the WARPLAND RPG</h1><p>Forbidden by The Tenet, the technological wonders of the Eloi are anathema to the denizens of the civilized places of <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">Warpland</a>, the death sentence that they carry ensures that only the bravest and most secretive Technocrats are able to keep more than a handful. The <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG core book</a>* includes only 13 of these Technocratic treasures, and here are three more from me. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Quantum Harmony Generator </h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg50OniZm8-ncsuONuBKS6bEVcl-V188uG3p1RzIR44ZSBSySZp8d7IDsOoRbUV7nWp8DIZXiqlm0bm9Em3AGwl8_FpZgxZIuFxEXnBbJ5cqB1vuqnjriAJgiqsCGbzIbHQynZ4ip5-PtNTfL4ndZRn8fEDAowpCF9EXS10mSKHmHok3O7TiRkXTPkL" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg50OniZm8-ncsuONuBKS6bEVcl-V188uG3p1RzIR44ZSBSySZp8d7IDsOoRbUV7nWp8DIZXiqlm0bm9Em3AGwl8_FpZgxZIuFxEXnBbJ5cqB1vuqnjriAJgiqsCGbzIbHQynZ4ip5-PtNTfL4ndZRn8fEDAowpCF9EXS10mSKHmHok3O7TiRkXTPkL" width="240" /></a></div>This device emits harmonizing quantum waves that stabilize the chaotic energy of Warpland, creating pockets of relative calm and clarity amidst the swirling psychedelic chaos. It acts as a sanctuary for weary travelers and provides temporary respite from the mind-bending effects of the environment.<p></p><p>Upon activation, the Quantum Harmony Generator nullifies the effects of the Aether of Warpland for 1d6 hours in a radius of 2d6 x10 feet. A single use of this device is enough to completely drain a Crystal Shard.<br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Molecular Phase Disruptor</h2><p>This once-experimental weapon disrupts the molecular structure of targets, causing them to temporarily phase out of sync with reality. The affected creatures or objects become translucent and intangible, their phasic displacement making them more vulnerable to physical sources of damage. </p><p>When using the Molecular Phase Disruptor, make an attack roll as normal. However, instead of applying damage directly; instead, the Molecular Phase Disruptor adds an amount of damage to subsequent physical attacks done to the target by an amount <i>equal to the lower die </i>on the attack roll. This additional damage is applied to the next physical attack done to the target, after which the target returns to a normal phase alignment. This artifact uses Crystal Shards as normal (usage die applies).</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSENw-4QlFjcIFv9ZiukPWapNAIeZ8E-Xnu-hqPpCwdLaolqbopk4t9gwmZOrb0XwazcwaY-Kr3Vnv69GG59yaoHO7jfLPW3nBjvu-3I4RtN9vbjdRArU2O8QK8AbZY7ID_shBsZNY-zg0qkdZFe8CjQ7IeftKxXlu0cAPw0rfX4Og3yrJ2Ubf26p4" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgSENw-4QlFjcIFv9ZiukPWapNAIeZ8E-Xnu-hqPpCwdLaolqbopk4t9gwmZOrb0XwazcwaY-Kr3Vnv69GG59yaoHO7jfLPW3nBjvu-3I4RtN9vbjdRArU2O8QK8AbZY7ID_shBsZNY-zg0qkdZFe8CjQ7IeftKxXlu0cAPw0rfX4Og3yrJ2Ubf26p4" width="240" /></a></div>Psimax</h2><p>This bizarre headset amplifies the user's psychic abilities, granting them enhanced telepathy, telekinesis, and other mind-altering powers to navigate the strange landscapes of Warpland.</p><p>Any time a character attempts to use a Full or Partial Mutation that requires the expenditure of a Willpower point, test Wits; if successful, the mutant retains the Willpower point. This use of the Psimax works once per session. Further, when used in conjunction with Mutations or Gifts of the Void that affect the mental state of another (such as Confusion or Awe), the Lore test is made with a +1 bonus. Either use of the Psimax forces a roll of the usage die. <br /></p><p><i>*If you've enjoyed this or any other of my <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG</a> content, please consider using the affiliate links in this article to support this site. </i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-56027941678113498222023-05-01T17:45:00.005-04:002023-06-30T09:55:44.018-04:00Three Skills for the WARPLAND RPG<p><i>I recently got a hold of a copy of Gavriel Quiroga's excellent <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG</a>* and while we were making characters for it, a few people's character ideas didn't quite jibe with the skills in the book, which meant it was time to make something new! Here are three skills that we're currently trying out in my Wednesday night WARPLAND campaign.</i></p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDV02iZLjeGER1pS8Lbv3LE_i_Y6ZTIXm7TYILcuziHrVQGvp0mly5of1iwmsR4dhNbIDCcM31ISfpPMoNgf9KNVgNqWxhaYg-VpAqex5ILSDzwqhyHfusfOsFZh_uaa3talgpuVClRRfUFF9xp2y7p8aHTSTfFQQ5TEhV4OA6hE2hE_Mw1RCjHVio/s640/0%20-%20A%20far-future%20assassin%20in%20the%20style%20of%20Moebius%20.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDV02iZLjeGER1pS8Lbv3LE_i_Y6ZTIXm7TYILcuziHrVQGvp0mly5of1iwmsR4dhNbIDCcM31ISfpPMoNgf9KNVgNqWxhaYg-VpAqex5ILSDzwqhyHfusfOsFZh_uaa3talgpuVClRRfUFF9xp2y7p8aHTSTfFQQ5TEhV4OA6hE2hE_Mw1RCjHVio/s320/0%20-%20A%20far-future%20assassin%20in%20the%20style%20of%20Moebius%20.png" width="256" /></a></div>Assassin:</h2><p>murder for hire is always a growth industry and these lands are no exception. Assassins' stock and trade is the art of subtlety, of stealth, of knives in the back, and poison in goblets. Experts with poison, assassins may use it without fear of poisoning themselves and have an encyclopedic knowledge of its use and manufacture. Similarly to thieves, assassins have a contact within the Brotherhood of Whispers; a wise assassin maintains a ready source of work. Further, the assassin may choose one ranged weapon to be skilled in.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Mutant:</h2><p>the wastes of Arkanar are rife with savage mutant bands desperate to eke out a meager existence in the wake of the collapsed Eloi civilization. Mutants are experts at survival, knowing how to find what little water and life there is to find in Arkanar, how to track it, kill it and preserve it and are proficient in the use of all stone weapons (metal weapons follow the standard penalty). At character creation and any time the mutant mutates, they may reroll each mutation dice rolled once. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Lotus Eater:</h2><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivYBWk_oUWuZ3e5jLvXluX1ORStr3K4ymZGj310qtVWLTlqKS8GSa_7DlppIooYT4RGgBAY8cKiT0MefoZNewpsSH7dUxRHslFUvwH_6nxdADJgutKN_0EPZon-_1AeQ2vWE0B2lhhvUUUEAEW-NKE8mERsTr1etYjHsO22T6oib5tuw-YYH9kEeAL/s640/1%20-%20A%20far-future%20drug%20addict%20in%20the%20style%20of%20Moebi.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivYBWk_oUWuZ3e5jLvXluX1ORStr3K4ymZGj310qtVWLTlqKS8GSa_7DlppIooYT4RGgBAY8cKiT0MefoZNewpsSH7dUxRHslFUvwH_6nxdADJgutKN_0EPZon-_1AeQ2vWE0B2lhhvUUUEAEW-NKE8mERsTr1etYjHsO22T6oib5tuw-YYH9kEeAL/s320/1%20-%20A%20far-future%20drug%20addict%20in%20the%20style%20of%20Moebi.png" width="256" /></a></div>few adventurers can resist the lure of psychoactives, and the lotus eater has decided to lean into them. Familiar with the effects, forms, origins, manufacture and culture of drugs, the lotus eater can find psychoactives in any city as well as in the wilds (outside of a city, this will yield unprocessed drugs that need to be prepared for use). Lotus eaters can feed their addictions with any psychoactives handy; they can partake in any drug to satisfy their addiction to any other drug. <p></p><div><i>*If you've enjoyed this or any other of my <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358971/WARPLAND?affiliate_id=608192" target="_blank">WARPLAND RPG</a> content, please consider using the affiliate links in this article to support this site.</i><br /><p><br /></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-19417466016664988972023-03-28T17:14:00.001-04:002023-03-28T17:17:12.096-04:00Being, Torchbearer and Time <p> I've been running a lot of Torchbearer lately and making a lot of TikTok videos about it (hit me up @DSRAdam over there while we still can) and I'm at the point with my TT videos where the thought that I want to talk about is either (a) too long for a TikTok video or (b) is too in-depth for someone to engage with. What a way to come back to the blog, eh? To return to writing over here simply because I cannot talk about what I want to talk about elsewhere <i>and </i>to want to do that talking?</p><p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LN57VE-JoTqewtcqFva-XXCQvyd8rY9yxMUJqz0JKgeFxVlcI4Ew4bxUaebCJHOUozqpbVw9UNRRxsN88PB1_xqq8fS9_35oQ4vMAZneFCXIlHvrXQGO3sWdRy14WdU_YRF6RKWogDghuZ7a8BoisT1w8042DdY5ae7EbZkOo3XkaJBeWraJ6Lbf/s640/1%20-%20Torchbearer%20Is%20A%20Game%20About%20Running%20Out%20Of%20Tim.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Image of a volcanic mountain pass" border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2LN57VE-JoTqewtcqFva-XXCQvyd8rY9yxMUJqz0JKgeFxVlcI4Ew4bxUaebCJHOUozqpbVw9UNRRxsN88PB1_xqq8fS9_35oQ4vMAZneFCXIlHvrXQGO3sWdRy14WdU_YRF6RKWogDghuZ7a8BoisT1w8042DdY5ae7EbZkOo3XkaJBeWraJ6Lbf/w256-h320/1%20-%20Torchbearer%20Is%20A%20Game%20About%20Running%20Out%20Of%20Tim.png" title="Torchbearer Is A Game About Running Out Of Time" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Starry AI</i></td></tr></tbody></table>It's a nice problem to have.</p><p>Anyway, here's the thing about Torchbearer: </p><p>Torchbearer is an RPG about running out of time. </p><p>When you're in the Aventure Phase in Torchbearer, every 4th turn you rack up a new Condition. When you're in the Town Phase, everything you do adds to your Lifestyle Cost, which you have to square up when you begin your next Adventure Phase -- this is even harder during the Respite Phase, a special-case Town Phase that happens about once or twice a year in-game. The game's third phase, the Camp Phase, depletes a meta currency unimaginatively named "checks." In the first two cases, you're racking up a tally (Conditions or Lifestyle Cost factors) that you'll have to deal with later; in the Camp Phase, you're spending the "checks" to do that dealing. Balancing the three makes it apparent: Torchbearer is a game about running out of time.</p><p>Time is a strange resource in Torchbearer, as well. In every RPG, we have a few different types of time that we need to bear in mind, and there's a feeling that "game time" will pass if we let it. By just doing anything -- or even nothing at all -- time will pass in most standard RPGs. In Torchbearer, time passing isn't quite so simple. Well, at least not for the Adventure Phase.</p><p>The Adventure Phase is the most fun part of Torchbearer. It's where you do your Torchbearing and other things that The Game Is About. To communicate that "aboutness" (intentionality is the word for those playing along at home), and to approximate the BX rules that are the wellspring that Torchbearer flows from, Torchbearer breaks down "time" into Turns (although the name of the time convention is arbitrary, using the ancestral nomenclature is appreciated), and every fourth Turn, all of the PCs (adventurers) in the session gain a Condition. But unlike other games that use Turns as a time abstraction, Turns in Torchbearer <i>do not simply pass on their own</i>; you, the adventurer, <i>make them pass</i> by taking actions. </p><p>The simple extension of this idea is that time only passes when adventurers take action. Turns do not pass <i>without the players choosing to make them pass. </i></p><p>While Torchbearer is clearly intended to be a game about digging around in dungeons for cool loot, it doesn't have to be. The central time mechanic of <i>time passing because the players chose to do something</i> is really quite simple and takes our most basic resource, Time, and put the players in control of it directly. I think we can harness that central time mechanic to make Torchbearer tell other kinds of stories. </p><p>As long as those stories are about running out of time.</p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-42210252920592095082022-05-01T15:13:00.000-04:002023-06-06T17:46:17.010-04:00These Dice: A Corruption System for Old School D&DWelcome back to another post about These Dice:<br />
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Today, I'll specifically be talking about These Dice:<br />
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The following system is designed to fulfill a specific need: I run a lot of games at conventions featuring low (1st to 3rd) level characters. For these sessions, I tend to prefer lightweight, old school-type rule sets like OD&D white box (or my preferred retro-clone, Delving Deeper). I like systems like DCC's Spellburn, supernatural patronage and such for spellcasting, but don't want a system quite that dense for these sessions, since the emphasis should be on the players' collective skill and ability to overcome the challenges they face through thought, rather than just lucky breaks. I'm not saying that DCC player can't do this in a DCC session (quite the contrary), I'm just looking for a system that does something similar with (a) a lower degree of swinginess and (b) that's lighter-weight and plays faster at the table. And so I came up with these rules right before U Con this year and sort of dared my Magic User players to take me up on trying to use them. No one did, but more on that later.<br />
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In the depths of the dungeon, the magic of raw possibility, of untapped potential, of primordial protean puissance lurks, waiting to be taken advantage of by sorcerers and magicians plumbing the dungeon's depths. Furthermore, other powers from the near fringes of the cosmos's darkest haunts, outer gulfs and starless voids eagerly proffer arcane might to those bold enough to seize it. Yet, as with all things, there is a price...<br />
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Whenever a Magic User has expended all of his spell slots for a day, he may embrace the innate arcane wildness of the dungeon and attempt to cast a spell he has previously expended. In doing so, he accrues a number of Red Dice to his Corruption Pool equal to the level of the spell being cast. After the effects of the spell are resolved normally, the Magic User rolls his accumulated Corruption Pool, noting all Elder Signs (6's) rolled. Each Sign represents a degree of Corruption that the caster immediately incurs, though he may Save vs. Spells for half.<br />
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The Corruption Pool is cumulative and persistent: each successive spell cast in this manner adds to the pool's total and this total does not decrease by normal means such as rest. Thus, it is important for the caster to call upon such resources only when absolutely necessary, only in small amounts, or only when his self-preservation instinct has been overshadowed by a lust for personal power. However, certain sorcerous tomes speak of rituals designed to cleanse the body and spirit of such taint. Such rituals demand at least 1 hour per die in the Corruption Pool and use up an amount of valuable materials of no lesser value than 100 gp per die as well. After casting such a ritual, as the taint leaves his body, the caster must roll the entirety of his soon-to-be-depleted Corruption Pool and take whatever consequences may arise from the event (he may still Save vs. Spells as normal). Should he yet live after this ordeal, his Corruption Pool is reset to zero.<br />
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The levels of Corruption are broad categories allowing for interpretation by both player and DM alike. General guidelines for what the levels mean are as follows:<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8187128942585713021.post-24463835891498350742020-01-22T07:00:00.000-05:002020-01-22T22:57:08.699-05:00WARBAND! Wednesday: Combat Round Sequence Of The 41st Millennium <br />
<i>Here's the first of potentially several posts about Mike Davison's WARBAND! This time, I show off how we re-jiggered the round sequence as well as a few other house rules that we put in place. In reality, we started with the other house rules first and added the new round structure around them to make it all feel suitably grotty.</i><br />
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Combat Round Sequence Of The 41st Millennium</h2>
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One of the great things about the WARBAND! rule set is how closely it hews to the BX rules that are so near to the hearts of so many gamers, myself included. However, for those of us who also have a fondness for 40k and other Warhammer properties (Rogue Trader is in my heart, y’all), a slightly more Warhammer-y round structure may be desired. What follows is a combat encounter round structure that more closely (though imperfectly) mirrors the round structure of 40k, but retains much of the BX sensibility.<br />
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<h3>
Round Setup</h3>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQUvev5pgO2_qfdXx__LjGMmHSx_Wh-4UNM8mFoExk7mezwNDtvwJcLcox8Iji__zlipLzoqRU-4VaVrszmwCf-WKa6kk5-7DnueG2o8d9nLlooCt69v5aGGkWirQtADCI3y9hmL5NRSQ/s1600/john_blanche_warhammer_003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="373" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQUvev5pgO2_qfdXx__LjGMmHSx_Wh-4UNM8mFoExk7mezwNDtvwJcLcox8Iji__zlipLzoqRU-4VaVrszmwCf-WKa6kk5-7DnueG2o8d9nLlooCt69v5aGGkWirQtADCI3y9hmL5NRSQ/s320/john_blanche_warhammer_003.jpg" width="233" /></a>At the start of the round, a small amount of planning and housekeeping needs to happen. First, take note of any effects that happen every round (such as “damage over time” effects or psychic powers) and resolve them. Next, players must declare whether their characters will be making a Fighting Retreat (see below) or using any psychic powers in the round (though they do not need to announce which powers they will be using). Please note that the same sorts of declarations must be made for henchmen as well. Finally, each “side” in the combat encounter must roll 1d6 as their initiative roll for the round. In each Phase below, the belligerents will act in the order of their side’s initiative scores.<br />
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<h4>
Everybody Acts</h4>
In any given phase, each “side” of the conflict acts, and acts in initiative order. Thus, after the side with the highest initiative resolves their Ranged Fire phase, the side with the next-highest Initiative resolves their Range Fire phase and so on until every side has acted and then play moves to the next phase.<br />
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<h3>
Ranged Fire Phase</h3>
Any character with a readied ranged weapon may fire at the beginning of the round in the Ranged Fire phase. If a character in Close Combat range attempts to fire a weapon other than a Pistol, such as a rifle or heavier weapon, they immediately provoke 1d6 attacks from opponents in Close Combat range with them. Range Fire attacks with Pistols at Close Combat range do not provoke such attacks.<br />
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<h3>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvESdrYPqB4UrOD2Jg_QAelMqloEcB-J_OyynnUPdgUaHBhwCBq_dFitSxfMJOqp-a2DSEV_X188otshFpAi4p9VlmGLGYc6zl793gGFyb7gBQ0u1E1Sicq-xJoDE2kyAzihIjB409kqk/s1600/necromunda_004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="446" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvESdrYPqB4UrOD2Jg_QAelMqloEcB-J_OyynnUPdgUaHBhwCBq_dFitSxfMJOqp-a2DSEV_X188otshFpAi4p9VlmGLGYc6zl793gGFyb7gBQ0u1E1Sicq-xJoDE2kyAzihIjB409kqk/s320/necromunda_004.jpg" width="227" /></a>Movement Phase</h3>
Characters may move up to their combat movement speed.<br />
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<i><b>Moving Into Close Combat Range</b></i>: If their movement takes a character within Close Combat range of any foes, they must stop.<br />
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<i><b>Moving Out Of Close Combat Range</b></i>: If a character attempts to move out of Close Combat range without declaring a Fighting Retreat (see below), the provoke 1d6 attacks from opponents in Close Combat range.<br />
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<i><b>Fighting Retreat</b></i>: This action must be declared before the Ranged Fire phase begins. The character may move half their normal movement rate out of Close Combat range and does not provoke any attacks for doing so.<br />
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<h3>
Close Combat Phase</h3>
Characters may make Close Combat attacks against foes within Close Combat range. Characters’ gear largely determines the number of attacks they get, though some monsters, robots, vehicles and other opponents may have attacks defined differently.<br />
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<i><b>No Weapon or Improvised CC Weapon</b></i>: One attack per round.<br />
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<i><b>Combat Knife / Chain Sword or Axe / Power Fist / Power Sword or Axe</b></i>: Character gains one attack per round which must be made with the weapon indicated. A character is limited in the number of Close Combat weapons they can wield by their number of hands or other similar appendages.<br />
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<i><b>Lightning Claw</b></i>: Character gains two attacks per round which must be made with the Lightning Claws. A character may gain the benefit of wearing no more than two Lightning Claws, despite physiology. If wielding another weapon in a non-Lightning Claw hand, follow the rules for additional attacks normally.<br />
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<h3>
Psychic Phase</h3>
During this phase, any Psykers who declared during Round Setup (see above) that they will be manifesting a psychic power may do so, following the normal rules. However, if the Psyker took an injury earlier in the round, they must resolve a Psychic Power Test (roll 1d20 equal to or less than the character’s PSY score) to manifest the power. If the character fails the PSY Test, the manifestation fails; however, the character may choose to open themselves up to the power of the Chaos Warp. Characters who do so may still manifest their psychic power, but at the cost of losing one point of a random ability score (roll 1d6; 1 = STR, 2 = DEX, 3 = CON, 4 = INT, 5 = PSY, 6 = CHA). During Round Resolution (see below), be sure to record all of the effects of such a loss.<br />
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Witches shall not be denied.<br />
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<h3>
Round Resolution</h3>
At the end of the round, resolve any lingering effects that may be pertinent. Sides that have suffered a significant loss may have to make Morale rolls based on the following conditions:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Leader defeated (in the case of a PC’s henchmen, this applies when the PC hits zero Hit Points).</li>
<li>First casualty (for their side)</li>
<li>50% casualties (based on side’s overall numbers) </li>
<li><i>Fear</i>-type effect in play </li>
<li>Other as defined by DM</li>
</ul>
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Sides failing a Morale roll will either rout or surrender, ending their participation in the combat encounter. Surrendering units that are attacked immediately strike back, resuming their place in the combat encounter as normal.<br />
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Finally, record the effects of any changes to the characters involved to their game statistics. For example, if a character has suffered damage or loss to an Ability Score, this is the point where that loss takes effect (ie, that damage does not take effect until this phase).<br />
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Once the Round is resolved, return to Round Setup for the next round or exit the combat encounter if all opposing sides are defeated or routed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3