Thanksgiving Randomness Continued

In the same vein as yesterday, here is another hero and another rogues gallery to populate the odd corners of your game world.

Skye Montana, otherwise known as the Judge, was born in her eponymous state by a family who magically bound her to the spirit of the place. Possessed with a mountain lion's fiery heart and piercing eyes, she also has a spirit brother she calls the Wild Wind. Wild Wind controls the weather, whisper secrets of her environment to her and travel away from her to explore other places and return with information. When she turned 20 Skye was recruited into The City, an extra-dimensonal space that helps to guard civilization across the multiverse. Serving out a 3 year term of duty she has returned to her own world older, wiser, perhaps a trifle more bitter and worn down but certainly more powerful to act as earth's supernatural defender. (Weather Control, Heightened Senses (increased hearing and detection, clairsentience), Animal Powers - Lion (ht. strength+10, ht. charisma+15, ht. endurance+8), Dimensional Travel A - the City, Reduced Charisma -6 from City bitterness).

The Scorpion is a man gifted with extraordinary power but an inherently untrustworthy nature. Having found a suit of spirit armor that he can don to give him protection, super-leaping, increased strength and an enervating ray blast. Finding that opened his mind to the multi-verse and let him see peoples thoughts, finds their weaknesses, command their obedience and even override their body's automatic functions. He was meant to be a champion of the City but his natural contrariness made him sting them. Now he runs a criminal empire on Earth, but no one knows his ultimate goals, which betrayals are part of that and which are just him following his nature. (Heightened Charisma, Telepathy, Weakness Detection, Psionics - autonomic override, Armor B Item (Ht. Strength, Speed Bonus) Devitalization Ray item).

Whisperer is a mystic who has mastered the languages of the material world. All metals have pledged themselves to his command and not not harm him, and he can convince other physical objects to move for him with a little bit of effort. He can command the matter of his own body for impressive feats of physical prowess and whisper to the minds of humans to alter their emotions or reduce to see him. Whisper uses this great power for personal gain - after all, even with all this power a man still need to eat! and live in fancy penthouses! To his credit he does not use his powers to coerce women into his bed - he uses more conventional methods to acquire his companionship. Still, he will accept payment from less than savory people for doing things they require. It's a shame that Gaia has pledged her favor to so faithless a man. (Magnetic Powers, Telekinesis, Willpower, Emotion Control, Invisibility)

Owl-Woman-Monster is an incarnation of the ancient Native American monster. Capable of highly controlled and precise flight she is all but unbeatable in the air. Her breath contains a pheromone that at the very least slows if not paralyzes those around her and either paralyzes or kills those she actually bites. Despite her name the only part of her that does not appear human is her feathery hair, which she can hide with some effort if she wants to mingle with normal humans before hunting them. A creature of magic she is very hard to kill, having returned from 'being destroyed with no body found' at least twice in classic comic book fashion. (Flight, Ht. Defense. Ht. Expertise with all attacks while airborne, Poison/Venom)

Denton Crystal, the Man with the Diamond Brain! Sometime in the 1800's an inventor in the American West who built a device that crystallized his mind, making his thoughts flow ever more smoothly. With this genius he built a device that would heal any wounds and extend life, and other that would transform a body into indestructible crystal. Trying to sell his inventions to the robber barons for a quick payout he was derided and driven off as a snake oil salesman (since they didn't work on, well, everyone. Mostly just on him and people who shared some genetic markers with him). Swearing vengeance on society for turning down his 'gifts' he turned to crime, Over the last 150 years his natural brilliance has dimmed a little (though his device still makes him one of the smartest men in the world) and his musculature has faded some, but his hatred for the soft brains is undimmed (Ht. Intelligence Device, Regeneration Device, Chemical Power Device, Reduced Strength).

Thanksgiving Randomness

This year, aside from the usual health and family stuff, I am thankful for Villains & Vigilantes. Sure I'd played games before that and a lot of games after that, but V&V was a real breakthrough game for me in that not only did it produce really cool, memorable gaming experiences but it also made enough internal sense for me to take it apart and figure out how it worked and why. That pocketwatchability made the rest of my gaming career possible.

One thing I would do for fun on snowy days was roll up 26 characters in V&V and build a campaign setting around them. This ended up being very useful as I could populate somewhere the players had never been with an interlocking web of heroes and villains to drop into world-history conversations, making the world feel more lived in. In the big shared comics universes there are other heroes, other teams, other things going on that the PCs aren't involved in, and V&V's random character creation made it easy to capture that.

So on and off I'll presenting a hero, his rogues gallery and their likely crimes for GMs to use to populate the places of their world that the PCs don't inhabit, either for worldbuilding backstory or crossover opportunities.

The White Elephant is the hero of the metropolises' theater district. By day Drew Moore is a fight choreographer and special effects theater technician, but since he was gifted with a really ugly statue that grants him the ability to grow anywhere from 9-20 feet in height and extend his wings for super-hearing and flight he spends his nights fighting the criminals who prey on the theater goers and the theaters. In addition to carrying a tusk-shaped club to wield in combat he's a bit of an inventor, using his knowledge of light and sound design, costuming and electronics to find ways to out-wit his foes. (Size Change- Growth, variable up to x3, Body Power - extended ears act as wings and triple hearing, Heightened Intelligence A +6)

Wixua is a madman obsessed with Chinese martial arts movies. White Elephant's still not sure how he gained his ability to fly, his mastery of esoteric martial arts styles (which include chi-punching people at a distance) and ability to deliver staggering amounts of damage, but we do know that he continues to attack, kidnap and threaten people in and around the theater district. Wixua is actually driven by the spirits trapped in an ancient construction deep under the district, but he doesn't understand their demands entirely - he just knows he has to keep following what commands he does understand in order to keep his powers. (Flight, Natural Weaponry +3/+6 with bonus power (chi can enhance initiative for next turn by +8 or be used as a 1d12 Power Blast, Heightened Attack, Special Requirement)

Pit Boss is a theater musician who sold his soul to the devil for power. In return he received a magical clarinet that can generate flames, cold, or hunks of stone that move at his muscial command. More importantly, he knows a spell that lets him infuse another person with a theater spirit, giving him a cast of rotating sidekicks such as the incredibly lucky Nathan Detroit, the dangerously accurate Annie Oakely or the deadly psychotic Sweeny Todd. Whenever Pit Boss returns its with a new sidekick and crimes that are thematically appropriate for that sidekick. (Pet, Flame Powers Item, Ice Powers Item modified so it makes cold or rocks with the density of ice.)

Fagan is a thief who runs a ring of young thieves, just as in Oliver. Fagan is blessed with incredibly keen senses, an ability to spot the main chance and perfect moment to strike and super-human strength that belies his slender frame. He also possesses a strange, alien device that lets him warp reality in inexplicable ways - he's not entirely sure how it works, or how to get it to do what he wants, but he has mastered using it to make himself ageless, invert gravity, create temporary tunnels through solid objects and other tricks to help him escape. He claims to have been the original Fagan who picked this object off of someone on the London streets and has been toying with it ever since. Depending on the game he could be a black-souled kidnapper or a greyer figure who offers the abandoned shelter and compassion; regardless you can always have the aliens come back looking for their gizmo.... (Heightened Senses, Heightened Strength B, Mutant Power Device)

Small Actor is a crazed, failed thespian who, despite his mastery of all the physical skills of a master dancer, acrobat, singer and magician is simply too flat, wooden and unlikable to succeed in the arts. Acquiring a drug that let him reduce his size he now preys on other actors and theater types - slipping around unnoticed he can acquire (or create) evidence for blackmail and extortion, acting as a procurer and dealer for their baser instincts and even go go far as murder. (Size Change - Smaller, Heightened Expertise (any theater related roll), Heightened Defense, Reduced Charisma.)

Scot is a witch, able to magically change her shape to any animal or to three different female forms of varying ages (something W.E. isn't aware of yet, as one of those forms is her alibi), She has an incredibly active brain that gives her a wild imagination, lets her shrug off lots of pain and gives her faster than normal reflexes. Most importantly she can shift in and out of the Dramaturgological Realm. She can reach into there to alter probability, enter it partially to become invisible, intangible, both or simply enter into it completely to disappear. Her plots are always about stealing the things she needs to perform versions of Shakespeare's plays in the higher realm in fashions that would let her rewrite the world. She's White Elephant's greatest threat and the one for which he is most likely to need assistance.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Inventing gets a test in Gaslamp Romance

We had the 6^th session of Gaslamp Romance last weekend and I finally got a chance to test the inventing rules as they were meant to be used. With the goal of capturing how inventing works in the book I wanted it to be both reliable and frantic. That is to say that if a spark gets a long stretch of uninterrupted time they can likely do what they wanted to do, but the universe will not allow them that time.

Short form is that Sparks have to define what they want to build and the GM will set a number of successes based on how hard that is on a pretty generic table. That also determines how big it is and how much time it will take. Target successes can be modified by having better or worse equipment, having something to modify rather than starting from scratch, having notes to work from, and so on. Success over what you need translates to reduced time or smaller devices.  

If the invention takes longer than the GM wants to give you (which it likely will) complications will arise, forcing you to create sub inventions, race to replace faulty parts, sacrifice some of your gear or accept flaws in the original design to follow through on your original timetable. If you’ve ever read some of the Girl Genius comic you see how often these distractions happen so I wanted to catch it here.

In the latest session our heroines have to engage in some rapid inventing to save the lives of a race of constructs whose creator recently vanished (I’d say dead, but hey, that’s never a done deal in Girl Genius). Bella started working on her own and failed – there are rules for how long it takes you to figure out that you’re on the wrong track and she realized after several hours that she wasn’t going to get it right. So she pulled Elena in and the pair tried again. This got them the bare minimum successes for the project, finding a solution inside the dawn timeline.

At which point I had a piece of their equipment break. The Sparks had to hold things together while Nadia snuck through the city to steal the parts they needed. This is specifically designed to give the non-sparks something to do during the inventing, and by everyone’s accounts it worked well. They got the parts in place but Nadia had taken so long that I ruled they now needed another success if they wanted to hit deadline, describing how they now needed to boost the temperature past what the rig was designed for unless they came up with another plan.

The players tossed back and forth whether they wanted to risk another inventing roll (an advantage is that story wise success or failure are equally interesting) and Elena instead opted to double down and accept a drawback on the invention. This meant that the rig exploded just after they got enough of what they needed, coating Elena with a film of mutagenic goo that WILL DOUBTLESS HAVE NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER LATER. Really.

Hooray, our heroines saved the construct race! Who immediately became very creepy, so our heroines fled the scene with all speed, which WILL DOUBTLESS HAVE NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER LATER. But more importantly the rules seemed to have met with player approval. 

D&D 5E Initial Play Thoughts

Now that I have a session of 5E under my belt I have a few comments on its design and functionality.

Advantage and Disadvantage are useful enough. They don't really solve the whole problem of needing to track and add bonuses to things as any number of spells still add or subtract digits from die rolls but they do solve most of it. I suppose that's enough.

The swinginess of the system isn't as noticeable at low level, where we expect play to be very swingy and dice dependent.

The spellcasting systems are too complicated. I need to redesign part of the character sheet to make it clear to the people with Cantrips that those are powers with infinite uses. Right now the fact that there are casting rules for one set of spells and other rules for a different set is messing with the players. Things are going to get worse when the Sorcerer levels up and there's a third set of rules for her spells distinct to the sorcerer class. This might not be a problem to people coming in fresh, but its enough not like 3E and Pathfinder that it grates and slows play.

The Kits, er Backgrounds, need to be clearer in how experienced the PC is. As it stands its possible for your first level PC to be a local hero, a respected officer or an established member of a spy network - all of which imply a certain level of life experience - or an untested acolyte or street urchin - which implies a very different one. It's a minor nit, but since the experience tables treat levels 1-4 as the Design In Play, your kids from the backwater village become legitimate heroes levels, it became a noticeable one. The actual abilities conveyed by the backgrounds don't have to change, just the text for them.

I'm not sure we need the subraces; they add another level of complexity to what could be rapid character creation (Race + Class + Background; select 2 skills from list, done) and I'm not sure how much they add other than more need to memorize crunchy bits.

Likewise I don't think I'll be adding Feats to my game. I found them critical in 3E, but now I feel like they're in the way. Has my gaming style changed in the last 14 years? Sure. Now I feel like the people who saw Non-Weapon Proficiencies as being optional in 2E and treated them as optional, as opposed to what I did back in 89 which was treat them as critical.

I get the real sense that 5E is trying to reduce the advantages of system mastery, but didn't want to go all the way on that, so Feats are still there but 'optional' and classes have lots of little options. I want to see system mastery go the way of the dodo in this edition, however. Hence some of my decisions.

I also told the players that they had to go with either the standard spread or roll at the table and take what they got. I then had to wrestle one of the adult players to the ground because he immediately insisted his character concept required a point build so he could spread things around and not have the '8' that comes with the stat spread.

I do have to admit that when Nick rolled up his elf paladin and the dice hosed him (he has more penalties due to stats than plusses) he took it with impressive grace. Jason admitted later he'd probably have groused more than Nick did. Nick then took our advice and borrowed things from the Dragon Magazine article I wrote years ago about how you can use bad stats to make your character impressive by having his background - being the sole survivor of a red dragon attack that killed his village - be writ in scars across his body to explain clearly why he has a below average Dex and Con. Yes, he has below average stats, but since he should be DEAD, and you would be DEAD if you'd been there, his stats are pretty damn awesome. It makes for a visually and socially impressive character, and fortunately 5E is not stingy with increases to stats over play.

I'm looking forward to next session.

The Caves of Erratic Decision Making

Continuing from last time, our heroes had survived a goblin ambush and found both the trail to the goblin's lair and evidence of survivors being dragged away from the last ambush. I can't go into too much detail on this because at this point he players have intersected with the material I'm re-purposing unchanged from the module that came with the D&D Starter Kit.

Suffice it to say that they engaged quietly, overextended, recovered, moved forward, engaged quietly, overextended, recovered, moved forward, rinse, alter repeat until they fled somewhat ignominiously back to their base camp.

Ya'know - First Level.

Their base camp was making use of the depression that held the cache, covering it with the canvas, covering the canvas with a layer of sand. That preparation proved prescient as the quintet spent the night lying silently in the sand as the goblins and their wolf scoured the island for them. Luck or divine assistance saw them through the night (I ruled the searchers needed an outcome of 15 or more to find them and their rolls were 4 and 14).

The next morning our heroes take stock - they don't have any good way off the island, they know the Goblins are likely prepared for them, and they don't know what the pirates (or whoever left the cache) were doing on the island. After some debate they decided to follow the pirates trail tos ee if they could find another boat. Moving past the original ambush point they cross the island to find another cove that does indeed contain a boat. And another. And another - more than two dozen shipwrecks dating back at least 400 years jumbled up against one another like a mad jigsaw puzzle, held in place by the orange-grey coral that has grown up between and around them.

"That's not possible" Roberto whispers.

Between them and the mass of wrecks seagulls and crabs are congregating, hiding something in the sand. Shooing them away with magic and yells they find a group of eight bodies, all as decomposed as the ones the goblins were using for the ambush. Brock surveys the area with a soldiers eye and discerns that these people were fighting one another - 3 on 5 from the looks of it - and accounted for most of the damage before they were struck by a third party with bows. The arrows were taken, and the bodies stripped just as the ones at the ambush site.

Roberto examines the bodies and finds markings of both Talos and Malar worship amongst the fallen - both chaos gods, and erstwhile allies.

There's also evidence that whatever these people salvaged from the shipwreck mass was stolen by the Goblins and brought back to their camp.

"What," Olam asks, 'In the Nine Hells is going on here?"

We'll find out more next month!