New Salem Character #3: Paper Doll

Paper Doll (John David Heather Winthrop IV)

Pyramid Tier: 1    Experience level: 3

Affect/Gimmick: "The clothes make the man". He's impeccably dressed, but his clothes are a series of paper tearaways that let him change his appearance immediately, similar to the 1980's DC hero Nemesis' face masks. He's androgynous, creepy, unstable of personality, and carries tailoring shears as a weapon. 

Gang?: Yes, the Decoups (French for Cut Ups). There are usually only a few of these at a time, and given his powers might not be there of their own will. They generally appear as fashion model types. 

Status: He's a pimp primarily, running a string of whorehouses in the Bowery, but he's also a 'vanisher'; if you need to disappear he has safe houses and alternate identities; if you need someone else to disappear, well, he can do that too. He reports up through the Hustler in both capacities because he wants the Syndicate's implicit protection; they want him somewhat controlled and at arms length. He's helpful, but crazy

Powers: 3

1. Armor B (Device): Armor Defense Rating is only 33 because it's layers of paper clothing. Still, it provides him with 2 secondary powers
1. Transformation C - Disguise: His can, with 5" movement, change his clothes appearance, tearing away what he's wearing to reveal a completely different outfit. Given his Absorption power this acts as very effective disguise (d% save to identify him once he's out of sight and switched). 
2. Strength Boost: If his armor ever takes ADR damage, add his Charisma score in for his Strength and treat it as Heightened Strength C (see game mechanics notes) when calculating carrying capacity and HRH damage for his next action as he goes a little berserk. His new Carry Cap is 1,096 and his new HTH damage is 1d10.
2. Absorption - Personality/Affect: Paper Doll can duplicate someone else's affect, either by spending an action studying them at relatively close range (15") or remembering from a prior study. Once he assumes their affect he doesn't physically change but he gets 100% of their voice, mannerisms, inflections, stance, etc. and even without his armor it's a d20 save vs. I to not be fooled (with his armor it's d%). This acts as half strength Weakness Detection (+3 to hit, no weakness learned) on whoever he's mimicking. He does not know that this also lets him duplicate psychic powers, and will be mightily surprised when he learns it!
3. Transmutation - Identity (Device): By changing someone's clothes into the paper clothes of his making he can alter their identity. As with his own Absorption their affect will change, as will their personality (which is of Paper Doll's design and always subservient to him, though not always noticeably). Targets need to consent to the change or be unconscious when it happens. Targets will have only hazy memories at best of what thet did while they were transformed. d% saves vs C are allowed per hour once the clothes are removed. 5 charges per day, it takes a solid 3 minutes to change the clothes. 
4. Low Self Control: Paper Doll isn't 100% there... he will fly into rages, love bomb people, and shift between the affects and personas of people he has absorbed. Treat this as the Prejudice weakness for initial reactions only; some people can learn to deal with him, or fall for his dedicated charm. He should be played as mercurial and unpredictable.

Weight: 160               Basic Hits: 4    Agi Mod: +0

S: 9         E: 12          HP: 9            

A: 14        I: 16          Pow: 51          

C: 14                         Move: 34"        

Accuracy: +1

Damage Mod: +2

Reactions Mod: -1 initially or +1 later

Carrying Cap: 154    HTH: 1d4

Inventions: Tailoring shears are a surprisingly well made weapon (as good as a hatchet) +1 to hit, +1d6 damage. His Safe As Houses are tailor made safe houses good for relocating people who need to be hidden and all have secret exits; he has (I*lvl) in use at any time and they are 1/2*I*d% to locate with extensive work.

Background/Origin: John David Heather Winthrop IV is absolutely not the heir to the Happy Witch Toy Company, which is the major employer in the Bowery. His father has made that absolutely clear for while HWTC has existed since the Great War selling things with spooky iconography, Randolph 'Duke' Heather Winthrop IV and his forebears take no truck with loose morals, hedonism, or personal weakness in their staff or their family. The decidedly odd John David never saw eye to eye with his old man, took and inheritance and popped off to live his own hedonistic life. 

Duke hoped his son with end up as solidly reputable tailor, or even an fashion designer (acceptable one supposes), but expected him to end up a dissolute, prodigal, failure. Instead John David vanished, and "J.D" the Paper Doll took his place in a cut up of fashion and identity and sex and violence. 

Paper Doll is, on paper, a pimp, pure and simple, running a set of bordellos and whorehouses for the people who come to the Bowery for their vice. His real talent is making you into someone else... whether you want it or not. Creepy and unsettling, people come to him to get away from the law, or themselves, or their errors and debts. Sometimes people don't come to him at all, he goes to them, or someone delivers them, and they disappear into an identity that isn't their own....

Game Mechanics: I'm introducing a small change to V&V to suit my own preferences. Rather than normal carrying capacity being based on a cube of 1/10th your Strength, it's the square. This means that 'normal human' Strength can go as high as 27 before you're getting outside of real human ability. If you have Heightened Strength B, however, you keep the cube calculation. Heightened Strength C are cases where you have small strength bonuses (such as from Animal/Plant Powers) but also keep the cube calculation. It's a very minor tweak, but it helps at the scale we're playing with here. 

New Salem Character #2: "Magic" Eight Ball

'Magic' Eight Ball (aka Margarette Magritte)

Pyramid Tier: 1    Experience level: 2

Affect/Gimmick: 1950's Mobster's Moll. The visual is entirely Judy Garland singing "Get Happy" in Summer Stock, but the rest of the gimmick is a cannier than you think moll with penchant for magical artifacts.

Gang?: Yes, the Lucky Breaks. Men and women both, but they are all in matching ivory/cream suits with different solid color shirts under the jacket; you won't see the pool ball effect until all 7 of them are together. 

Status: Eight Ball is a blackmailer and thief (that is to say she steals things she can use as blackmail evidence) who works for the syndicate as a numbers runner; she's small fry in the big scheme of things but given her powers she might post a threat to PC security. 

Powers: 3, with weakness

1. Cosmic Awareness: See game mechanics notes below, but Eight-Ball can ask yes or no questions of the universe (if she were a PC, she would be asking the GM), with a % chance of success and then a % chance of getting a clear answer. She won't get a wrong answer but it will be 'answer unclear' and not 'no' or 'signs point to yes' (yes, her answers mimic the responses on the magic eight-ball toy).
2. Special Requirement: She can only use her cosmic awareness if she has a shiny spherical object to stare into while using the power.  
3. Heightened Senses: This has three functions. First, she has natural ability to sense magical items, and her 'inventions' between encounters will be recently stolen small use artifacts. Second, any saves for her to detect things are one level easier (d20 vs. I rather than d% vs. I*3, or D% vs I*3 rather than d% vs I) due to mild precognition. Finally, She can spend 1 point of power to get +1 accuracy on an attack, or 3 points per +1 to direct one of the Lucky Breaks attacks. 
4. Heightened Charisma A: +13; bonus power, use her C rather than her I when using Cosmic Awareness. 

Weight: 120             Basic Hits: 3    Agi Mod: +2

S: 10        E: 15        HP: 11            

A: 17        I: 13          Pow: 55          

C: 26                        Move: 42"        

Accuracy: +2, or higher (see Heightened Senses)

Damage Mod: +1

Reactions Mod: +5

Carrying Cap: 149    HTH: 1d4

Background/Origin: Margarette Magritte lives inside the world of crime for the excitement and sexual charge of it. Moving from wherever-she-came-from, middle-of-nowhere EH 00000 to New Salem to get somewhere exciting, she became the moll for Johnny Dastardly (One of the Stagedoor Johnnies) as he ran his small gang. Bored one day and staring into a pool ball, she started asking questions... and getting answers from the universe. She's not sure why (she's 1/64th Witch-Blood, but doesn't know it), but she was able to steer Dastardly into several major scores. Then he slapped her around for being too mouthy. 

Johnny Dastardly didn't last too long after that. 

Somehow he ran right into a hail of cops bullets as a supposedly safe score went all wrong. Margarette took over the gang then, taking the name Eight Ball. The Hustler soon took her under his wing and she learned the advantages of being in charge of her own gang while having some protection via the Syndicate. 

Eight Ball has a 'day job' of running numbers for Hustler. If you're not familiar that means she runs an illegal lottery game based on outcomes at the New Salem track, Francis Circle, which borders the Bowery. This keeps her and the Lucky Breaks going while she works her bigger scores of robberies to secure magical artifacts or blackmail materials. Her Cosmic Awareness lets her figure out who she should target, and then how best to do it, but it takes time and she has to ask the right questions. 

Game Mechanics Notes: RAW, Cosmic Awareness is a mess of a power, as the character is so limited in what they can ask, then it's either pay a lot of Power or have a 50/50 chance (it says 60% but it's -10% per question to be asked) of being knocked out or damaged, and THEN you unless you have a well above average Intelligence it's a less than 50% chance to even get a correct answer; otherwise the GM is advised to lie. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. To my mind it's better that it be a clear yes/no on a success or an ambiguous answer on a failure. For a PC this means a vague hint, or riddle, or other puzzle, or direction on who else to ask. Also, RAW, Cosmic Awareness is at best a secondary power, and the more of a focus it is for the PCs the more leeway the GM should give with it. In practice I could have built Eight Ball with nothing but Cosmic Awareness augmented for a 1-power character, but like this she emphasizes how much or little oomph you can put behind any character design for the GM to interpret/Player to experiment. 

New Salem Character #1: the Hustler

The Hustler (aka Ernesto "Fats" Mahoney)

Pyramid Tier: 2    Experience level: 5

Affect/Gimmick: 1950's Pool Hustler. About 5'8" but broadly built, some fat hiding lots of muscle. Stronger than you think. White shirt, suspenders, navy sport coat and pants, green visor, cigarette behind ear or in mouth. Carries a pool cue, chalk, and more balls than you'd expect in those suit pockets.

Gang?: Yes, the Solids. They are all beefy guys with different solid color breast-pocketed tee shirts, and the pockets all have numbers (1-7) on them. They are his legbreakers and security inside the Gleason, his pool hall HQ

Status: The Hustler is a limited threat (unless he gets lucky) but a surprisingly useful node on on the pyramid. He makes book, runs some gambling halls, and has two other costumed criminals under his eye in the Bowery. The Gleason is an information hub up and down the the Pyramid.

Powers: 3

1. Transmutation - Change Probability. PR 8 per use, 26" range. He doesn't visibly act for this to happen, but it does take his attack. The environment shift in such a way as to give him a lucky break. If used to incapacitate 1 foe it is d% save to recover; if used on multiple foes in an area (13" half radius) it is d20 to recover. If used to damage someone it does 2d8 damage. This can be used as a carried attack on any of his basic combat as a "lucky shot". He may sometimes auto-succeed on detection rolls, but that counts as use for Power cost. 
2. Heightened Expertise: +20% in gimmick of Pool Hall Hustler. This is applies as a +4 to attack rolls, and +4 characteristic saves on d20, and +20% any d% based saves to characteristics. Assume Intelligence is 4 pts higher for Inventing Point purposes but only for creating pool hustler based equipment. 
3. Heightened Strength A: +6; bonus power, add 60 lbs. to effective weight without agility penalty (effective weight 300 lbs).

Weight: 240 (300)    Basic Hits: 6    Agi Mod: +0

S: 20        E: 10        HP: 19            

A: 15        I: 13          Pow: 58          

C: 15                        Move: 45"        

Accuracy: +2, or +6 with pool-related weapons

Damage Mod: +1

Reactions Mod: +2

Carrying Cap: 750    HTH: 1d8

Inventions: His two piece custom made pool cue is +3 to hit, +1d6 damage; he has convenient chalk dust which lets him target an opponents eyes without a special attack roll, 50% chance to blind opponent until they take an action to clear their eyes but no damage done; His thrown pool balls are +3 to hit, +1d3 damage, 15" range and may have secondary effects such as being bola (target loses 35" movement this turn), or being able to target a arm/hand/leg without a special attack roll. One blackout eight ball that acts as a smoke bomb (per darkness, 5" radius, lasts 2 combat turns/30 seconds at full blackness, another minute as shadowy cover). Over time he might have pool balls that deliver gas/flare/explosive attacks but he doesn't have them yet. 

Background/Origin: Ernesto "Fats" Mahoney was born lucky and cunning, and parleyed that into a career as a pool hustler, moving around the country. He eventually realized he was more than just normally lucky and started to obsess over why, developing his pool-hustler-chic and a tendency to push his luck with crime - break ins, bank robberies, etc. He first took the costumed name "Eight Ball" and led a gang called the Lucky Breaks in New Salem. 

When the Bahamian Sawshark approached him with the offer of joining the Syndicate or having his thumbs bitten off, Mahoney abandoned the Eight Ball identity and became The Hustler, opening up Gleasons and settling down to run numbers and protection for the Bowery. He still has to get his hands dirty sometimes, backing up the Solids in recalcitrant cases, but for the casual observer he's legit. 

The Hustler knows that Margarette Magritte has taken on the Eight-Ball identity and Lucky Breaks; he's her mentor and encourages her. She's a beautiful dame, he can't help himself. 

He also runs herd on the Bowery's other costumed criminal, Paper Doll (an his Decoupes). Hustler finds Paper Doll deeply unsettling, but knows what buttons to push to keep him under control. 

New Salem Introduction

This series is going to explore possible ways to build an OSR style play for a comic book super-hero setting. This is perceived as difficult for a couple of reasons, but the big one is Comic book super-heroes are defenders of the status quo and hence reactionary, restoring order when the villains actions have created chaos; OSR play emphasizes player-defined goals that will inherently change the setting.

(Other reasons - such as mechanical complexity and rigor in many supers systems, or the presence hero point systems that place narrative control in players hands - are resolved just by system selection. Villains & Vigilantes 2.1 Edition was primarily written in 1982 and is much an OSR era design as its original edition from1979. No hero points, narrative expectations, random event tables, random character creation, no enforced character balance; perfect for this experiment.)

I'm trying to solve this problem by taking a Batman Year 1 approach: the city the heroes are operating in is fundamentally broken. The government is corrupt; the police are by and large little more than their own gang; organized crime rules much of the city. There are 'points of light' the PCs can protect and nourish - the one good cop, the crusading DA, the indominable publisher of one local paper - as well as the swaths of every day people who need protecting. But the PCs heroes have to drive it: pick where in the city to start, how to tackle what problem, who to negotiate with, who to take down. The city may someday have a bright status quo to protect, but the PCs have to get there. 

To start I'm following TardisCaptain's annual character creation challenge: 31 days, 31 characters for New Salem, mostly villains, some points of light (no other heroes; that's the PCs job), with the villains laid out in a Conspyramid (see the Alexandrian's review of Nights Black Agents to explain that, or my prior playing with it) to give me a sense of the city's villain politics. 

Over the rest of the year I'll start looking at ways to apply the conspyramid, how to handle change over time, and tweaks tot he V&V 2.1 rules for this, and so on. But for right now we're building some villains! 

Emirikol Brainstorming

Having decided on a swashbuckling game, an afternoon of general brainstorming gave me the following:

·       1st Ed DMG P193, Emirikol the Chaotic, more specifically the city represented. There are also docks with a high seas trade, if the PCs decide to go privateering.

·       Key Inspirations: Three Musketeers et al; The Phoenix Guards et al; Captain Alatriste et al

·       The empire has no emperor - the last emperor, who lived well over a century, ascended to Godhood and left a republic in his wake. Most of the noble houses admit this is for the best, and the larger houses are major landholders and are hardly without power in the republic.

·       The mercantile class is burying up lesser nobility’s lands; technically they are purchasing a lien, as only the emperor/an act of the republic can deprive a noble property. Nobles in bad luck lien out lands to get funds to survive until the next lien period, leading to lots of landless nobles.

·       These landless nobles are the PCs. The Aristocrat is being beefed up to be a full character class, and if any PCs takes levels in that they still have some family land (and therefore funds).

·       The landless nobility take personal honor, and dueling to protect it, very seriously. There are dozens of different fencing schools, each proclaiming their own superiority, along with church forces and the republic’s armies.

·       Like fencing, magical combat is taken seriously. Sorcerers are those who have trained in specific spell and weapon combinations so obsessively that they can perform them unprepared (often by lesser nobility), and they also gain the short sword proficiency .

·       Some of these schools are so well developed as to have their own prestige classes, enterable at or around 6^th level. Paladins have become a Prestige Class; once the emperor’s personal guard, with the last emperor’s ascension these incorruptible swordsmen are beacons of justice.

·       Legal duels require a witness (preferably a paladin), fought to first blood or unconsciousness. With a Paladin and Lay on hands present, it means legal duels are seldom fatal - though the Paladin will heal 1 point to keep you from bleeding out and you can heal the rest on your own....

·       As far as weapons are concerned, Emirikol has no heavy armor. Classes with heavy armor proficiency get 1 extra skill point per level instead. There is no heavy armor because there are firearms - single shot guns that do d6 or d8 damage with a threat range of 17-20 and a x4 crit multiplier – and heavy crossbows. Basically, why heavy armor died in the real world.

·       Short bows, longbows, and light crossbows are illegal inside the city, and not considered the weapons of noblemen outside them. There are laws/customs for who can carry what weapon where, all designed to keep the PCs armed with daggers, short swords, rapiers, and longswords.

·       There was some time of chaos in the past, from which the law-driven empire was founded. Over time some noble lines fell into chaos cults, building elaborate chaos crypts for their rituals and treasures. Those lines ushered in a chaos invasion, and when that was beaten back the lines were destroyed. Anything found in a chaos crypt is fair game, tax free.  

·       Monsters that can’t be affected by critical hits (especially corporeal undead) are exceedingly rare; beast men of all sorts and chaos agents are the real threat. Clerics worship the 4 elements plus ancestors and the divine emperor. Turn Undead will get a boost since undead are rare.

·       Since the 1^st level multi-classing rules are a pain, and I want PCs to define early with multi-class (especially with Aristocrat) I am letting people stat out at 2^nd level, but they still have to earn the 1000 XP to get from 1^st to second (so at 3000 xp earned they get their first in game level up).

·       limit the starting PC races to Human, Elf, Half Elf, Gnome, and Halfling; I am hoping to see more gnomes and halflings, I don’t want to deal with Dwarves/Half Orcs. Human names are Spanish; Elven, French; Halfling, German; Gnomes, Hungarian. Avoid random collections of syllables.

This was enough to get started and share with the players for character concepts.