Category: Other Systems

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Elves & Espers: G-nomes

G-nomes are the descendants of pre-Apocalypse gnomes, and embrace genetic engineering with the same enthusiasm (and sometimes explosive results) as their ancestors embraced mechanisms and before that alchemy.  They use magical viruses to rewrite their own genetic codes to cosmetically alter their appearances and give themselves interesting and unusual animal parts and abilities. They are the size of gnomes (about the size of a human child) and are always humanoid, with large eyes, but sport a wide variety of fur, scales, feathers, or brightly colored skins, as well as accouterments like horns, claws, fangs, and so forth.

In New Ark City they’re often found as Web Runners, using their rocket-skates to traverse the cables that make up the web delivering messages hither and yon, or in similar professions where regard for one’s personal safety is regarded as a handicap.

G-Nome

Small (-1 Toughness)
Natural Weapons (Str+d6 with one, or Str+d4 with two) – G-Nomes may choose what natural weapons they have, and may choose to shed them and grow different ones, though the process takes a week during which they will have no usable natural weapon.
Attractive +2 CHA. G-Nomes may look bizarre, but they see no reason to be unattractive, and whatever look they adopt will be designed to be aesthetically pleasing
Low Light Vision.  Their large eyes give them low-light vision.

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Elves & Espers: Zombots

Zombots are corpses that have been infested with nanite colonies that grow mechanical linkages to make them lurch around in an unholy resemblance to life.   Zombots are hideous travesties, with wires and rods piercing their flesh, writhing under their skin and snaking around their bloody and decaying bodies, manipulating them like grotesque marionettes.  In settings where the Guts skill is used, encountering a Zombot requires a Guts check.

Zombots have no other drive than to create more Zombots and consume flesh and circuitry to sustain themselves, though forbidden Necrotech can be used to command them.  In its inactive form, the nanites are a grey dust (Zombot Dust) that is harmless unless it comes in contact with a corpse or an open wound.  A corpse will become a functioning zombot in 1d6 rounds; a living being will have to make a Vig roll every hour or suffer a Wound and once it becomes Incapacitated will rise as a zombot.  Zombots require flesh to function (it’s part of the programming of the nanites), so although fire won’t destroy the mechanical parts, if you burn away all the flesh, the Zombot is destroyed.  Zombots require a steady infusion of new flesh and circuitry to sustain their activity, and will always be on the prowl trying to consume; once a Zombot has killed a victim it will spend 1d4 rounds feasting, ignoring what else is going on unless it comes under attack. If it spends more than a day without being able to consume anything, it will go into hibernate mode, remaining motionless and emitting no energy readings until a victim gets within movement range (Pace).

When deciding what to attack, the Zombot will go first for the closest person who attacked it, next for the closest victim (choose randomly for equally distant targets); count all robots, computers, and sophisticated machinery as potential victims. Zombots will only employ ranged attacks (if the form has them) if it is not possible to close to melee.  Zombots will incorporate whatever weapons the victim was carrying into itself and use them.  Zombot infection, however, is only carried by natural weapons, not incorporated ones.

Trafficking in Zombot dust (and all forms of Necrotech) is punishable by death in New Ark City.

Zombots

Zombots have stats as their living counterpart with the following exceptions:

Str: +2d Smt: Unintelligent Pace: -2.

Undead: +2 Toughness, +2 to recover from Shaken, No Called Shots, No Wound Penalties
Infectious: creatures bitten/clawed by Zombots must make a Vig roll every hour or suffer a wound, and will become Zombots after they’ve been Incapacitated
Regeneration none while active, Fast once killed
Weakness Fire, double damage, prevents regeneration

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Elves & Espers: Pigsies

Pigsies are flying porcine vermin. They are sentient, though they never direct their intelligence towards anything other than getting high, eating, crapping, and screwing.  They resemble pigs with butterfly wings (the dust from which is highly psychoactive) and human hands instead of front trotters, and wear rags for clothes.  They are generally armed with bows and spears, and bags of magical powder that they hurl at opponents.  They can chew their way into just about anything, and whatever they can’t eat or snort they break and befoul.  They stink to the high heavens.  They enjoy playing malicious tricks on people, but will usually stop short of outright murder, though if a blinded, hallucinating victim should fall to his death from a great height that would be hilarious.

Pigsie

Str d4 Agl d8 Spr d6 Smr d4 Vig d6
Parry 5  Tough 3 Pace 4/10
Size -2 (-2 to be hit, +2 to hit man-sized foes, -2 Tough-already accounted for)
Fight d8   Throw d6   Shoot d6  Taunt d8
Bow d4 +2 AP  Elf-shot d8 v. Smr or -2 to Trait Rolls (-4 on Raise) from hallucinations
Spear d4
Slumber Powder (1 use) Spr -2 in a Medium Burst or sleep for 1 minute
Blind Powder (1 use) d8 vs. Spr or -6 to Trait Rolls, Parry drops to 2 for 3 rounds

Pigsie Dust

Magically psychoactive dust from ground Pigsie wings, highly addictive.  Grants 2d10 extra Power Points for 1 hour, Vig -2 roll (cumulative if you take another dose before the first wears off) or accompanied by hallucinations (-2 to Trait Rolls for 1 hour); on a 1 on the Vigor die, you’ve become addicted  (gain the minor Hindrance.  If it happens again it becomes a major Hindrance.  Each time thereafter you lose a die off Smarts).  Addicts may take a maintenance dose that takes the edge off (doesn’t grant them extra PP, but doesn’t risk worsening the addiction).  Pigsie Dust is illegal in New Ark City (misdemeanor possession, felony distribution); you don’t want hallucinating magic users with power to burn running around the city.

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Pigsies! Why did it have to be Pigsies?!

Session Summary for 11/30/08: Elves & Espers

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a recap around these parts. Let’s fix that.

Sunday night’s session picked up from a previous adventure (undocumented, because Ye Olde Recapper wasn’t present). That session was the first in the Elves & Espers campaign, in which the previously introduced characters banded together and picked up their level-1 quest: Clear out the vermin in the basement. This session opened with our brave exterminators, plan in hand, setting out to accomplish that goal.

Continue reading “Pigsies! Why did it have to be Pigsies?!”

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The Mythic Game Master Emulator

The Mythic Game Master Emulator is pretty good for solitaire play; it’s actually more ambitious than just random dungeon stuff, it’s meant to allow you to use charts to randomly determine much more open-ended adventures. There’s a demo pdf that lacks the main chart, so you can’t actually take it for a test drive, but it does give enough explanation (I think) to get a sense of how it all fits together. Basically it gives a structure for asking yes/no questions and resolving whether it’s a strong no, no, yes, strong yes depending on the odds and how “chaotic” the scenario has become and whether a random event has occurred and if so what sort and whether it interrupts the logical flow of the scenario. A random event isn’t just a wandering monster but something like: Move toward a plot thread, Action: Expose, Subject: Jealousy, and then the player has to interpret what that means in the context of the adventure so far. If nothing suggests itself, it’s just dropped.

It’s surprisingly easy and satisfying, particularly for strongly structured stories like exploring a dungeon (possibly supplemented with random monster and treasure charts for determining things like what precisely is lurking in the cavern that the Orcs won’t enter) or perhaps a manor-house murder mystery…it takes a bit more practice and comfort with taking a “director stance” approach to at least some of the play for a really open-ended story, but it’s really good at keeping you from knowing everything that’s going to happen in advance on the one hand and having the adventure feel completely random and undirected on the other. Even though once you grasp the system, it really boils down to about 2 pages of charts (out of 54 pages), besides explaining the system the remaining pages do have a lot of helpful examples and advice about how to use it and how not to “cheat”… I found it well worth the $7.

I haven’t yet tried to use it for play with other players, and I’m not sure I will…though I can imagine keeping the chart around as a source of inspiration if the players hare off in a direction I wasn’t expecting and nothing immediate comes to mind.

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The Saga of Boatmurdered

This is the record of a game of Dwarven Fortress, as played by a series of people swapping off after each game-year.  It’s both hilarious and sad.

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Savage Worlds New Edge: Demonic Ritual

Requirements: Novice, AB:Demonology

Demonic Rituals take 1 hour to perform per Rank of the demon being summoned. The TN for the ritual is 4 for a Novice demon, +1 per Rank of the demon. A raise on the summoning roll grants a +2 to the attempt to compel the demon. The demon appears at the end of the last hour of summoning, at which point the Demonologist must make a Spell-casting vs Spirit roll to compel the demon to do his bidding. If successful, the demon must perform one task for the summoner. If the Demonologist fails on the initial attempt to compel the demon, the demon may either return to whence it came or break the summoning circle and attack or possess the summoner. The Demonologist must know the true name of the demon he is attempting to summon; Demonologists collect the true names of demons and hoard them jealously, since while a demon is performing a task for (or worse, is in a pact with) one Demonologist it will not heed the summons of another. Taking this Edge gives the Demonologist the name of one demon of whatever rank he chooses for free; additional names have to be acquired in-game, or by taking the Edge again.

Success

The demon will use all of its normal abilities and powers to carry out the task. If the task is ongoing (such as guard this room), the demon may attempt to break the compulsion (spirit vs. spell-casting) whenever the Demonologist sleeps (treat as once per day for simplicity) and once more if the Demonologist is killed; if the demon fails to break the compulsion that final time, it is bound until released by magic. If the demon manages to break the compulsion, it can never be re-summoned by that Demonologist, and it will attempt to seek out and kill him (this becomes that demon’s Major Habit until the Demonologist dies). Generally it is safest for the Demonologist to specify tasks that can be accomplished quickly by the demon, before the Demonologist needs to sleep again.

Failure

The demon may leave, and the summoner may not attempt to summon that particular demon for 1 year and 1 day. If the demon chooses not to leave, it may attempt to break the summoning circle as an Action; this occurs in the same round as the Demonologist’s attempt to compel the demon, so the Demonologist has already used his Action. The demon makes a Spirit roll vs. the original summoning roll. If it succeeds, then it can leave the circle. Starting the next round it is dealt cards as normal, and on its Action it may try to attack the Demonologist, possess the Demonologist (Spirit vs. Spirit), flee physically, or retreat to its home. The Demonologist may attack it or attempt to compel it, but cannot reform the circle. If it does not succeed in breaking the circle, then the Demonologist may attempt to compel it again or dismiss it. It may not attempt to break out of the circle again until and unless the Demonologist once again attempts to compel it.

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This Looks Like A Job For…

This month’s blog carnival, hosted by The Chatty DM, is on the theme Super Heroes in RPGs.

Superhero RPGs are actually one of my favorite genres, though my current game group….well, let’s just say that our last couple of attempts didn’t work out.  I don’t want to be pointing any fingers at Badger Lord (Master of the Super-Sonic Tunneling Vampiric Badgers) or Kikko-Man (chinese food delivery bicyclist with the power to create illusions…of chinese food), but it’s never really clicked as a campaign.  I’ve had much better luck with one-shots where the PCs have super-powers, but the setting doesn’t assume any of the standard superhero tropes.

In the past, though, ah, the glorious past….

I believe our very first super-hero campaign, back in High School, used Superhero 2044, the very first superhero RPG ever, but we played them all at one time or another: Superworld (one third of the Worlds of Wonder),  Villains and Vigilantes, Champions…I don’t really remember much about it, although I do recall that it had a somewhat unusual setting (it all took place on an island nation in the year 2044) and that my brother Alex’s character in that, a super-speedster called Silver Streak, was carried over into successive campaigns as we tried new systems.  I think that was also the original home of an NPC hero that reappeared in campaign after campaign of mine, PyroMan of the International Agency Command.

The next one we tried was Villains and Vigilantes, which I remember mostly for its generation of super-powers via rolling on random charts.  Thus was born one of my only PC super-heroes of that era (since I mostly GMed): Kodiak, Bear Detective… a private eye who could shapeshift into a bear and had laser-beam eyes.  I decided that the bear form was actually his real one, and his power let him shapeshift into human form.

Somewhere in between Villains and Vigilantes and Champions, I created a home-brew system, and most of our super-hero gaming was done in that, though towards the end of High School we did some gaming with Champions.  I liked it a lot, but most of my gaming group didn’t want to be bothered with the bookdeeping, either for character generation or playing out the combats.  They were much happier with the freewheeling style of my home brew.

Notable characters of that period include:

  • Silver Streak: super-speedsters, perrenial in every system
  • Thunder-Fist: martial artist with kinetic energy absorbtion powers that gave him an “Iron Fist” like attack.
  • Defender of Israel: an Israeli Captain America, played by my brother’s Israeli girlfriend
  • The White Princess of Oz : I think this was played by my kid sister…
  • Megaman: powered suit that gave the user one super-power at a time, based on Ultra Boy of the Legion of Superheroes; this was about 7 years before the Capcom game…

In college and beyond, I played a lot of Champions, but that’s a story for another time…

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The Enchantress of the Burning Wood: Gaming Summary, April 10, 2005

It's recappin' time! Last night, we caught up with the characters from NuNeng. How new are they? So new, they don't even have a decent name for their party or their campaign yet. How about “Swiftside Story” for the time being?

When we last left our intrepid party, they had agreed to carry a message to the Enchantress of the Burning Forest. (Or, rather, Thamon had agreed, and hired the others to come along.) The previous session ended on the cusp of an encounter, and as we pick up the trail, an encounter there was….

Continue reading “The Enchantress of the Burning Wood: Gaming Summary, April 10, 2005”

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Conversations with Vinny

Bless me father ‘cause I have sinned…
It’s been a long time since my last confession and I gotta admit I ain’t been the nicest of persons, ya know? I don’t always respect my parents dat much and I probably use the lords name in vain more than I should but the serious stuff, I’s done my time and I’m a reformed man and I try not to get involved in that kinda stuff as much anymore.
Anyways, I’s seen lotsa weird shit, beggin yer pardon, I’s seen lotsa weird stuff in this city but I always figured it was just people being weird or stupid or mean or sumptin. So yesterday I tink I saws something different. I tink it was the real deal, pure evil and not just people acting evil but like ya know real biblical type evil stuff.
Whats I’m trying to say is, is it possible for the devil to be real and such. Not like real and if you die and you ain’t been good you go to hell real, but real like first there is a lawyer standin there in a crappy French suit and the next moment he’s seven feet tall with scales and horns and glowing red eyes throwing fire around at people?
‘Cause like a lotta weird shit happened, beggin yer pardon, a lotta weird stuff happened yesterday. Dis one little girl is claimin she be seein da ghost of Little Jimmy Two Shoes and then this lawyer dude shows up and turns into the devil and starts trowing fire around so I go out the back door and it gets even weirder from there and then the lawyer devil is gone and people is talking about vampires and werewolves and all sorts a late night move junk. ‘Cept they ain’t talking about it like it was a movie but like it was as real as traffic at rush-hour.
I swear father, I ain’t been hittin the sauce or nuttin least not as should be causin that sorta stuff. ‘tho anodder day like that and I’ll wanna.
But I gotta ask ya father. If evil IS real, if real evil can just walk through the front door and start trowin fire around and tryin ta kill people, then we’d haf-ta do sumptin about it right? We couldn’t just stand there and say ‘not my problem’ or waits fer da cops to show up right? ‘cause I’m tinkin I may already be involved and I don’t think I can just walk away but I wants to know that I’m doin da right thing.
Can ya help me father?

A Phone call later:

Hey, Mickey. Its me, Vinnie.
…
Nah, Vinnie Fratony.
…
Anyways, ya remember dat vest ya was wearin a year or two back when the Carlone kid got outta da joint? Well dats all cleared up now right? You ain’t needin da vest no more? Ya think I could maybe borrow it for like a couple a days?
…
Nah I ain’t in any trouble. ‘Least not like that sortta trouble. It’s kinda complicated. It involves this dame I’m interested in and she’s kinda got some trouble following her.
…
Heh, Yeah all dames is trouble but this one is kinda different.
…
Hey! I know better den gettin involved wit a married woman! Least if I did I might be getting some. Look I had a slow night last night and I need to pick up some fares. Gas ain’t cheep in dis city. Hows about I swing by the place and yer wife can gimme da vest?
…
Tanks! I owes ya one.
…
Heh. Yeah, I owes ya anodder one. Call me when you needs a lift someplace.