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January 1, 2019 hex culture Uncategorized

empire makes its way: settlements

Settlement Generation

I’ve been looking over classic Traveler system generation. It gets the job done, but the number of steps has me thinking about compressing as much information into rolls as possible during procedural generation. These tables are still probably for expediting prep rather than truly enabling at-the-table generation, but they might make things go faster and maybe encourage thinking about the ways different pieces of setting information are related.

*Basilicata* by flickr user *Dage-Looking For Europe*, shared under the CC BY 2.0 license.

Step One: Roll d100 to determine settlement population and reference the 1s place on the table below:

unfortunately an image. couldn’t get merged cells to work otherwise.

Step 2: Use the number of dice indicated in the “Stat Roll” column to roll the settlement’s stats: Influence, Intellect, and Combat. Whether or not a given stat is even or odd influences the character of the settlement. Also, the highest stat represents the background and affiliation of the town’s leadership. Tied stats represent a power struggle in the town.

Influence: A representation of a settlement’s general health and prosperity. If there is uncertainty as to whether or not a good can be purchased or a service acquired, roll Influence. Influence leadership might be a mayor, a council, an elder, or a merchant.
- Even: the settlement is sympathetic to the Moon Court.
- Odd: the settlement is sympathetic to the Holy Ghost Brigade.
Intellect: A representation of a settlement’s education and technology level. If there’s uncertainty as to whether or not a question can be answered, a technology repaired, or an expert found, roll Intellect. Intellect leadership might be a university, a lead researcher at a local research station, or a deep science cult.
- Even: Clean tech is favored and relatively easy to find. Ritual augmentation and deep science artifacts are frowned up to illegal.
- Odd: Ritual technology is favored and deep science is preferred. Even shadier ritual augmentation might get a pass, and artifacts are highly valued.
Combat: represents the settlement’s security and military power. If there is a question as to whether not a settlement’s constabulary or military will show up in force, roll Combat. Combat leadership might be a noble and their knights ruling the settlement as their fief, a military garrison, or an unusually powerful sheriff.
- Even: The local constabulary and military align with the nominal ruler of the territory.
- Odd: law enforcement and military act in their own interest or the interests of someone other than the local government: the Holy Ghost Brigade, local bandits, themselves.

Stats can be used for conflict between settlements at scale; opposed Combat checks for armed conflicts or Intellect checks for espionage.

Also, failing a town stat roll should be complicating rather than terminating. If the players want to do some robbing and the village they’re in doesn’t yield anything suitable with an Influence roll, then maybe blowing a nearby bridge will fill the town up with laden caravans with nowhere to go (as opposed to a wealthier town where there might be a bank, ready to go).

Example Settlement

A couple of rolls gives us a settlement with 71 people. Rolling 2d10 for stats, that gives us a town with Influence 5, Intellect 15, and Combat 15 that has rebel sympathies, tolerates dubious deep technology, and is ruled by a military or law enforcement that is working in opposition to the standing local authority. Putting that together, we have…

The Village of Morrt

Influence 5, Intellect 15, and Combat 15

Morrt is a sprawl of shacks, dusty farms, and parched pastures. Travelers can get basic provisions and buy some water, but buying anything even a little expensive or unusual is going to be a longshot.

Odd Influence: rebel sympathy. Villagers are poor and hostile to the Moon Court and its representatives. They might harbor a fugitive, lie to a government official, withhold taxes, kill a knight in their sleep, or rally around a charismatic bandit or rebel.
Odd Intellect: deep science sympathy. A House of Iä cultist by the name of Yume lives in a shack at the edge of the village and has been proselytizing for a while. Nobody is likely to join the cult, but they are convinced in the utility of deep science. Villagers might scrape up money to send mercenaries on a vault expedition, look the other way if they see someone use a taboo ritual augmentation, or close their doors in the face of a Synod investigator.
Combat Leadership – Odd Combat: Rogue governance. The town has a noncommittal militia and is effectively run by its captain, a farmer named Sartain. He and his inner circle are Holy Ghost Brigade spies, funneling information he receives as village head from the Court. He might ask sympathetic travelers to sabotage a Court expedition, kill a villager who is close to discovering the truth, or stage a coup to formally declare Morrt a HGB town.

Skills

Padding out the skill list for a largely terrestrial game where access to technology is limited and working animals are common. Also, a lot of skills on the rules-as-written list aren’t useful, since space is probably going to be very hard to get into. For the social skills, I tried to tie them specifically into areas of expertise (knowledge of etiquette and legal precedent) rather than making them extensions of a non-existent Charisma stat (Persuasion, Deception, etc). I think it fits better with the spirit of the game and might open up some interesting dynamics.

Animal Handling is getting animals to do want you want within the bounds of their behavior and intelligence.

Ceremony is knowing of the lives and sayings of saints, poets, knights, and kings. If you want to convince someone of something based on precedent or decorum, Ceremony helps. It also lets you officiate things like weddings, funerals, christenings, etc.

Commerce is appraising the value of goods, knowing if you’re being cheated, finding a buyer, and getting a good price.

Creed is a replacement for Theology, representing a general knowledge of all the various religions and esoteric beings that proliferate in the desert. It probably specializes based on major religion or religion type, but I’m not that far yet.

Deep Science is knowledge of the impossible alien technology buried in vaults across the system. Working directly with deep tech will almost eventually turn you into something bad eventually, but a deep science check to study somewhat more conventional ritual technology will let you bypass the normal penalties (i.e. disadvantage on working with it unless you designed or built it yourself).

Herding is working with herd animals, getting them where you want them safely and quickly, knowing when they’re sick, reading their behavior, and so on.

Rites is a skill, representing knowledge of ettiquette for greetings, farewells, insults, haggling, marriages, funerals, alliances, and the like. If you want to suck up to someone by showing respect or a willingness to play by the rules, Rites helps.

Law represents knowledge of legal precedent and taboos. It lets you represent yourself or others in a trial and conduct a trial if all involved parties agree.

Riding is riding on animals. Driving still applies to things like carts and carriages–if you’re on an animal’s back, it’s riding.

Riding Specialization applies to a particular animal, like emperor mantis nymphs, camels, or elephant crabs.

Training is training and taming animals, as well as getting trained animals to actually follow their training.

December 26, 2018December 26, 2018 hex culture Uncategorized

empire makes its way: gear

I’ve been running Blades in the Dark with some success, and one thing I really like is that the abstracted wealth and gear system removes boring and time consuming inventory management and provisioning aspects from the game. I don’t know if I’d want to replicate it fully in a game like Mothership, but I think there are ways to elide lengthy shopping trips and fussy bean counting using BitD as an inspiration

“Western Desert” by Bill Dickinson, under the CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license, available here.

Standard Gear

Your Gear consists of possessions you own and have steady access to. If you lose or expend an item on your Gear list, you don’t have to buy it again–once you get some downtime at camp, you reacquire more. However, you only have enough resources for the quantities listed–you may have “Travel Kit” on your Gear list, but you can’t take more than one with you on an expedition or sell them at quantity. This is an abstraction of time and wealth.

You start with everything in the Standard Gear list, which represents the equipment a ne’er-do-well like you can buy, steal, and bargain for. Your background provides some Special Gear, which represents what you and only you can get from your family, contacts, downtime spent tinkering and repairing, etc.

Other Equipment

Everything else, you have to buy to acquire (and buy again to replace). If you pay 50 times the list price for an item on the list in the book, you can add it to the Gear of the whole party.

Encumbrance

Just because you have all of this stuff doesn’t mean you can take it will you all the time. You have inventory slots equal to STR/5, rounded up. Your mount has inventory slots equal to its Instinct/5, rounded up.

Background Chart

Class		Skill		Special Gear
Bandit		Rimwise		Frag grenades (6), longarm of choice
Merchant		Rites		Draft hound and cargo sledge
Engineer		Mech. Repair		Tool kit (screwdrivers, wrenches, hammer, lockpicks)
Dowser		Creed		Water Sense augmentation, ritual bell
Farmer		Hydroponics		Motorized hydroponics wagon
Medic		First Aid		Medscanner, scalpel, automed (one dose)
Wanderer		Military Training		Longarm of choice, extra sidearm
Android		Computers		Random ritual augmentation
Scrapper		Scavenging		+1 Extra Ammunition, +1 Provisions, +1 Water
Scholar		Scholarship		Field Recorder, Binoculars
	…		…

Standard Gear List

Item	ENC		Description
Sidearm	1		Pick one sidearm from the weapon list. If you want an additional or different sidearm, you’ll have to buy it.
Melee Weapon	1		Pick one melee weapon from the weapon list. If you want an additional or different melee weapon, you’ll have to buy it.
Mount	0		Choose a mount from the mount list. If you want an additional or different mount, you’ll have to buy it.
Warm clothes	0/2		Clothing suited to cold weather. Encumbers if carried rather than worn.
Cool clothes	0/2		Clothing suited to hot weather. Encumbers if carried rather than worn.
Climbing Kit	2		2 coils of rope, a dozen spikes, a mallet, crampons
Survival Kit	2		A knife, flint and tinder, compass, map, canteen
First Aid Kit	2		Bandages, 3 doses antiseptic, 3 doses antidote, 3 doses fortified liquor
Travel Kit	2		Tent, bedroll, mess kit, cooking gear, firestarter, lamp
Provisions	1/2/3		Up to three days’ worth of food, coffee, and tolerable liquor. Each day is 1 ENC.
Water calabash	1/2/3		Up to three day’s worth of water. Each day is 1 ENC.
Extra ammo	1/2/3		Each 1 ENC of ammo is enough to fully reload one of your firearms once.
……………………….	……	…	……

Weapon List

All firearms are ritual tech. Reloading a single shot requires a significant action. Each manufacturing company confers a different advantage on a critical hit:

Lilit & Sons: wounds a hit location. Use the system on page 10 of the Mothership Player’s Survival Guide to determine the location. Wounded hit locations confer disadvantage on relevant checks until healed.
Baruch Manufacturing Company: knockdown
Ptolemy Arms and Design: ×3 damage

Sidearm	DMG	RNG	Shots
Lilit Model 13	1d10	20/50/100 m	6
Baruch Visitation	3d10	2/10/50 m	3
Ptolemy Cavalier	2d10	10/25/75 m	8

Melee Weapon	DMG	RNG	Special
Hardwood Knife	1d10	CQC	Can be used while grappling
Ceramic Machete	2d10	CQC	Good for hacking through vegetation
Ceramic Bayonet	1d10	CQC	Can affix to any longarm
Ceramic Glaive	2d10	2 m	Requires two hand

Longarm		DMG		RNG		Shots		Special
Lilit Helminth		2d10		50/100/300		5		Until receiving medical treatment, struck target suffers disadvantage on Body saves to recover HP or overcome infection.
Lilit Nightingale		2d10		100/500/1000		1		Makes almost no noise.
Baruch Seraph		4d10		10/25/75 m		3		½ damage to occult enemies normally immune to physical harm
Baruch Testament		4d10		10/25/75 m		3		On a critical hit, target suffers disadvantage on their Fear save
Ptolemy Emissary		3d10		20/50/100 m		8		On a critical hit, target suffers 1d10 bleeding damage/round until bandaged
Ptolemy Chariot		3d10		20/50/100 m		8		Can reload 1 shot per round without taking a significant action.
	…		…		…		…

Mounts

Mount	Combat	Speed	Instinct	ENC	Hit
Horse	15	45	45	9	2
Draft Hound	20	35	50	10	3
Mantid Nymph	25	75	15	3	1
Ritual Marionette	20	45	40	8	1

Failed Panic Checks cause local gravitational disturbances

Effect

User can crudely move and manipulate objects within [Intellect] meters (strength of a full grown person, dexterity and coordination as if one handed). Requires an Intellect check if there is some question as to whether or not an attempted feat is beyond the user’s ability. If given time to concentrate, the user can make Crisis Checks to increase the effective strength of this ability (cumulative ×2 per Crisis Number), but failure causes a catastrophic gravitational event. If used offensively, target can make an Armor save vs the user’s Intellect roll to resist, taking 1d10 damage on a failed save

December 25, 2018December 25, 2018 hex culture Uncategorized

empire makes its way

I’ve been reading through Mothership, and want to use it to run a game modeled on Dune, Caves of Qud, and Moebius. Salvage-based scarcity culture endlessly recycling barely understood machinery, alien deep science reverse engineered into volatile and unreliable ritual technology, enormous draft insects hauling precious water across the desert. I spent a lot of time trying and failing to write a concise setting summary, so here’s an encounter table with some item and NPC descriptions instead.

Encounters

1	Moon Court bounty hunter in clean tech Janissary Frame
	60 HP, 60 Combat, 30 Instinct, 40 Armor, Military Training, double move rate while in Frame.
2	Water Bearer carrying 50 days of water in a ritual tech cucurbit golem.
	Water Bearer: 40 HP, 15 Combat, 35 Instinct, Creed, Geology, Rites Cucurbit Golem: 75 HP, 50 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on a hit
3	Dog sledge trade caravan with 5000 credits worth of ritual tech
	Merchant Baron: 60 HP, 35 Combat, 20 Instinct, Military Training, Riding Mercenary (6): 1 Hit, 40 Combat, 25 Instinct, Military Training, Survivalism Draft hound (3): 70 HP, 20 Combat, 35 Speed, 50 Instinct
4	Emperor grub tribute caravan with 2500 credits worth of liquor and amaranth
	Militia (4): 1 Hit, 35 Combat, 30 Instinct, Hydroponics, Animal Training Emperor grub: 100 HP, 40 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on hit
5	Bandit posse fleeing Moon Court bounty hunter
	Bandit Leader: 60 HP, 50 Combat, 25 Instinct, Military Training, Rimwise Bandit (3): 1 Hit, 40 Combat, 25 Instinct, Military Training, Driving Mantid mount: 30 HP, 25 Combat, 75 Speed, 15 Instinct
6	Elder Gul on rampage
	Surrounding dust storm limits visibility to 10m 5 (30) Hits, 65 Combat, 35 Instinct Make a Sanity save on first sight or become a lesser gul upon death
7	House of Iä Pilgrimage
	Magus: 60 HP, 15 Combat, 45 Instinct, Creed, Archaeology, Ignition Augment Cult Warrior (4): 40 HP, 40 Combat, 30 Instinct, Military Training, Creed
8	Pack of emperor jackals
	Vicious, but susceptible to taming (4): 45 HP, 45 Combat, 35 Instinct
9	Wandering Devil Merchant riding cucurbit golem
	Knows how to implant any of its augments, requires 1000 credits Merchant: 50 HP, 35 Combat, 65 Instinct, Creed, Cybernetics, Rites, 3 random augments Cucurbit Golem: 3 Hits, 50 Combat, 15 Instinct, knockdown on a hit
10	Holy Ghost Brigade Sortie
	Scout (4): 40 HP, 40 Combat, 30 Instinct, Military Training, Rimwise Sergeant: 50 HP, 45 Combat, 55 Instinct, Military Training, Creed, random ritual augment

cucurbit golem: a creaking ritual tech automaton with a head and torso formed from an enormous calabash, canine hind legs and humanlike forelimbs. Engraved with esoteric circuitry and typically painted with a fierce face. The automaton only obeys spoken commands from its owner; ownership can only be transferred verbally and in the automaton’s presence.

elder gul: an esoteric being, transfigured by death and time and the influence of some deep science mechanism. It is horse-sized, bone pale, shrouded by mirage shimmer, moving in a way that suggests a deer or maybe a wolf, commanding hot desert wind and bleaching the distinction between life and death just with its presence

Janissary Frame: +10% Armor and double move rate. A clean tech battle dress used exclusively by the Moon Court. Genetically keyed to its operator. Someone with knowledge in hacking or jury-rigging could trick it into working for an illicit user for a time with a sample of the real owner’s biological material, but it would take real cybernetics expertise to truly jailbreak it.

Rites and Creed: Rites is a skill, representing knowledge of protocol for greetings, farewells, insults, haggling, marriages, funerals, alliances, and the like. If you want to convince someone of something, knowledge of Rites helps. Creed is a replacement for Theology, representing a general knowledge of all the various religions and esoteric beings that proliferate in the desert. It probably specializes based on major religion or religion type, but I’m not that far yet.

ritual tech: Modern technology has been adulterated with superstition and supplemented with reverse-engineered alien deep science, yielding an unpredictable but strangely efficacious “ritual tech”. As there is little infrastructure for modern material science and resources are scarce, most structures, vehicles, and devices are made from ceramics, plastics, and engineered wood. Metal goods and strictly conventional technology, known as “clean tech”, are expensive and reserved for space-faring vessels, heavy manufacturing, and high quality weapons, all monopolized by the Moon Court. Anyone attempting to repair, modify, jury rig, hack, or otherwise work with a ritual tech device suffers disadvantage on checks, unless they constructed or designed the device themselves–ritual tech is groaty fake science interwoven with reality-warping alien principles, and requires a mix of intellect, luck, and trial and error. Clean tech confers no such disadvantage.

ritual augmentation: Metal pigment tattoos forming esoteric circuits for cranial and neurological stimulation, providing uncanny powers of perception and influence: ignition, suasion, water-sense, alethiometry, telekinesis, etc.

Water Bearers: traveling aesthetic members of a reputable dowsing cult. Dig wells using sanctified ritual drills and sell water to those far away from water sources. Deny rumors of deep science, but people who show too much interest in the topic tend to disappear.

November 29, 2018 hex culture Uncategorized

My Most Influential RPGs

People have been sharing the 10 RPGs that most influenced them. Here’s a handful of mine–they aren’t the ones that I like the most or played the most, but have certainly had the biggest impact on how I think about table top games and gaming.

If You Knew Now the Fullness of Your Coming Regret, by Constance Hughs

The entirety of the game consists of the names and brief biographies of 100 characters in Plangence, a small South Dakota town. Its first and only print run was taken from shelves when the remains of 24 of the people named in the book were found in the author’s South Dakota home.

Chrysanthemums, by Anonymous

A simulationist take on Heian-era romance distributed in the early 90s by floppy disk. Its complex flower-based resolution system was derided by critics as inaccessible and expensive, but it accumulated a cult following.

Cradled in the Holy Hollows of His Hands, by Josiah Jameson

A diceless system based around accurate recollection of Bible verses. Its author claimed playing the game was an act of worship, drawing censure from a variety of Christian spiritual leaders. Publication rights have lapsed since its distribution in the 80s, and the author’s estate disavows knowledge of the game.

Supplement V, by M.M. Batiste

An unsanctioned fifth supplement to Original Dungeons & Dragons featuring extensive rules for what the author describes as games in the “Grand Guignol style”. An expansively cruel and gruesomely scatalogical tract claiming inspiration from 100 Days of Sodom, L’histoire de l’œil, and of course the shows of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, its appendices included “rules modules” well ahead of the booklet’s time, describing options for ascending armor class and damage on a miss.

The Whole of the Law, by Anonymous

A series of allegedly false documents that loosely outline a modern fantasy horror setting in which a revanchist neopagan splinter sect stages a successful coup in the United States in the late 1990s. Sold loose-leaf in a shrink-wrapped manila folder, it was pulled from shelves in the early 2000s, perhaps the real string of arrests in West Virginia towns in which must of the metaplot’s action takes place.

October 13, 2018June 26, 2019 jacinto Uncategorized

moving shop

I’ve decided to move my blog over to my own domain. The new blog is called hex culture.

As you might know, Google+ is being shut down within the year. I’ve been ramping down my social media use in general anyway, so I think this is an opportunity to cultivate a slower, kinder, and more thoughtful presence on the internet. I’m going to try to put my effort into more substantive blogging, instead of throwing out half-formed thoughts on G+ and then never developing them further. I’m also going to try to respond to comments more on the new blog–I would often fail to do so over here, due to a combination of blogger’s poor moderation tools and my own anxiety. Everyone who contacted me through gloomtrain has been very kind, and I appreciate it.

I will be closing comments on this blog soon, so it doesn’t get overrun with astrology spam bots, but definitely feel free to get in touch on G+ while it lasts or over at hex culture. I’m figuring out social media presence beyond that as I go.

Anyway, back to writing.

October 12, 2018 hex culture Uncategorized

the earth does not want you II

Working on a low level 5e pathcrawl of sorts for a haunted stretch of Floridian wilderness.

palmetto scrub with intermittent pine trees

Terrain

Palmetto Scrub. fronds just taller than your average person. You can shimmy up the periodic pine tree to see into adjacent hexes. Going off the trail through scrub counts as difficult terrain and requires you to make a DC 14 Dex save or take 1d4 damage per turn as you get cut up by vegetation and bit up by insects.
Pine Forest. Dark, cool, weirdly quiet, with close-set trees. The mist doesn’t entirely burn off in the mornings here. Going off the trail counts as difficult terrain.
Wetland. Mostly waist-deep muddy black water, dotted with soft-soiled islands that support sparse palm trees. Counts as difficult terrain, and hurrying requires a DC 14 Dex save or falling into a sump in the river bottom that you didn’t notice because you were in such a dang hurry. Swimming creatures get advantage on stealth checks here.

Pine Forest Encounters (1d6 by day, 1d8 by night)

2d8 bandits (pg 343 MM). Disadvantage on morale checks–they are actually teenagers and kids, and very hungry. You might get 1d4 of them to tag along if you talk them down and offer them food.
1d3 outlaws (pg 349 MM, see Scout). Will ambush if they can. The outlaw last in initiative order can cast produce flame cantrip at will and the hex warlock spell 1/long rest, but does not have a bow.
1d2 brown bears (pg 319 MM). Not interested in fighting. If the players win initiative and make noise without attacking, they make a Morale check with disadvantage or bolt. You can get good money for their pelts and teeth, though.
cougar (pg 339 MM, see Tiger). Stealth check vs lead player’s Passive Perception or else it falls on top of them and starts mauling. If the players notice it, it will track them semi-obviously until it has a good opening for attack. Flees if attacked, but always returns.
1d3 false raccoons (pg 318 MM, see Baboon). Can cast minor illusion at will and suggestion 1/day. Their heads don’t seen to join up with their bodies quite right, and their teeth are a little too human, and they can talk. They claim to be from a place ruled by November, where everything is wild and barren and twisted sideways. They like it here, though. They think they are going to stay.
Kehkerekhek, Mockingbird God. (pg 324 MM, see Giant Eagle). Can cast minor illusion, thaumaturgy, disguise self, and silent image at will. Phantasmal force and suggestion 1/day each. If he hasn’t taken damage on a turn, he can do a rude dance as an action, triggering an encounter check. Hates all False Beasts.
Knightingale (pg 350 MM, see Veteran). Vampire weaknesses. Can polymorph into a nightingale as an action. Armed with a saber and carbine made of red-tinted mercury glass.
Moonbeast (pg 347, see Mage). Can fly. Will ignore players until next encounter in return for a human life, the location of many victims, or the name of a member of the party. Otherwise, just wants to taste as much blood as possible. As pale and indistinct as a fish seen in deep water, looks something like a deer skeleton settled on its haunches when it comes to a rest.

Palmetto Encounters (1d6 by day, 1d8 by night)

2d8 bandits (pg 343 MM). Disadvantage on morale checks–they are actually teenagers and kids, and very hungry. You might get 1d4 of them to tag along if you talk them down and offer them food.
2d4 coyotes (pg 341 MM, see wolf). Will ambush if they can. Try to separate the enemy and chase them off into the scrub. Can be distracted by food.
1d2 giant spiders (pg 328 MM). If they get a surprise attack in, each will try to grab a PC and pull them into the scrub. They ignore the scrub as difficult terrain. Flee if it looks like they will lose, but will track PCs, waiting for an opportunity to attack by surprise again.
2d4 boars (pg 319 MM). Don’t ever roll Morale, won’t stop chasing. Their meat and guts are filled with vermin, but their pelts are still good.
1d4 false coyotes (pg 341 MM, see worg). Big coyotes, each with three tails and too many eyes scattered across their faces. They come from a place ruled by November, and they want this place for themselves. Each can cast tasha’s hideous laughter 1/day.
Grass House Dweller (pg 346, see druid). Palmetto scrub does not count as difficult terrain. Keeps the souls of those they kills in calabashes on their belt. If they start losing a fight, they reach right into the ground and pull out an enormous centipede like a person yanking a root out of the earth to distract their attackers as they run away. Will implacably seek revenge afterwards, though.
Knightingale (pg 350 MM, see Veteran). Vampire weaknesses. Can polymorph into a nightingale as an action. Armed with a saber and carbine made of red-tinted mercury glass.
Divine Carrion (pg 228 MM, see Mummy). A carcass of indeterminate provenance, bone visible, thin slices of rich red flesh peeking between mangled fur and too many limp limbs. Can move, but begins all encounters with a supernatural appeal to take a bite of it, which requires a DC 12 Cha save to resist. Those who succumb cannot regain hit points in any way, and rise as ghouls when they die unless the curse-disease is lifted. Hates all False Beasts.

Wetlands Encounters (1d6 by day, 1d8 by night)

2d4 bandits (pg 343 MM). Paddling along on rafts and coracles. Disadvantage on morale checks–they are actually teenagers and kids, and very hungry. You might get 1d4 of them to tag along if you talk them down and offer them food.
1d4 crocodiles (pg 320 MM). Likes to surprise attack and pull people into the dark water.
Horseshoe Crab (pg 324 see Giant Crab). Like to swarm and grapple a single target, dragging them underwater.
Elder Amphiuma (pg 324 MM, see Giant Constrictor Snake). Can also breathe water. Can cast thaumaturgy and guidance as cantrips at will; 1st level spell slot to cast command and animal friendship, 2nd level spell slot to cast augury. Friendly, if obscure and erratic. Hates False Beasts.
False Crocodile (pg 324, see giant crocodile). Walks on/swims with long human fingers, has wet and friendly eyes. Can cast command (recharges on a 5-6). Wants the pearl under the Elder Amphiuma’s tongue.
River House Dweller (pg 346, see druid). Has swim speed, can hold their breath for an hour. Keeps the souls of those they kills in reeds on their belt. If they start losing a fight, they stir up the waters, turning it into a seething mass of snakes. Will implacably seek revenge afterwards, though.
Knightingale (pg 350 MM, see Veteran). Vampire weaknesses. Can polymorph into a nightingale as an action. Armed with a saber and carbine made of red-tinted mercury glass.
Drowned Merchant (pg 24 MM, see basilisk). It wants for its waters to swallow more lives and goods, to learn dangerous secrets, for the crocodiles in its waters to be well fed. It will sell anything that has fallen into its home river, lake, or pond at considerable markup; reveal a secret know to someone who drowned in its waters

wetlands on a cloudy day out to the horizon, a lone dead tree in the distance

October 10, 2018October 10, 2018 hex culture Uncategorized

starting over

You might know me as Mateo from gloomtrain. I’ve decided to move my blog over to my own domain. As you might know, Google+ is being shut down within the year. I’ve been ramping down my social media use in general anyway, so I think this is an opportunity to cultivate a slower, kinder, and more thoughtful presence on the internet. I’m going to try to put my effort into more substantive blogging, instead of throwing out half-formed thoughts on G+ and then never developing them further. I’m also going to try to respond to comments more–I would often fail to do so on gloomtrain, due to a combination of blogger’s poor moderation tools and my own anxiety. Everyone who contacted me through gloomtrain has been very kind, and I appreciate it.

Anyway, back to writing.

July 30, 2016 jacinto Uncategorized

mean as the summer sun

This is kind of a self-indulgent post but whatever. Been thinking about mashing The Curse of Strahd up with the Mozarab Latin American setting implied by San Serafin. I never quite understood why Strahd doesn’t’t just kick the shit out of the party as soon as they show the smallest signs of competence (the adventure has an explanation, but I don’t find it satisfactory). I’ve tried to give it a more fairy tale/folklore vibe with constraints that make the cat-and-mouse game between Strahd and his hunters more interesting. Anyway, I’m changing Ravenloft to Hacienda San Cuervo, which is perfectly exactly as dorky as the original. ANYWAY…

There are seven Dead Men of New Barbary, each given special dispensation by the gods of death to reside in the Lands of the Living. They may only leave the darkness of their house on their assigned day of the week.

Dead Ohache’s day is Friday, and he lives in an iron house.

His flesh is flush with false life, his teeth are like a coyote’s teeth, and he licks them with a long red tongue. Everyone knows of his eyes, for they are as yellow and as mean as the summer sun, and they can see lies on a speaker’s breath.

Dead Ohache wears a calabash on his belt, from which he drinks and from which he draws his power. It is filled with blood: the fresh blood of his servants, subjects, and slaves, the cold blood of his brides and grooms, the bubbling blood of the ancient beast that hangs helpless and eternally wounded from the rafters of his house.

He has six spouses who administer to his hacienda when he is confined to his house. They are beautiful and evil and love him dearly, for he keeps their hearts locked away with his most valuable treasures.

His house is iron, it is narrow and tall, it juts from the earth like a nail from flesh. His house is a place of disorder, and he does not rule his land well. By Dead Ohache’s decree, all blood and all corpses in Hacienda Cuervo are his by right to take. The dead are not buried, but put to work, and the living are hunted and used for labor like animals. Dead Ohache is is a careless master, and his administrators are many and fractious. The villages on his holding’s border have attained some measure of prosperity, but everyone has a friend or relative carried away to labor in Dead Ohache’s fields, struggle in his mines, or bleed out for his supper.

Things to do in and around Hacienda San Cuervo

Dead Ohache’s depredations have awakened a mummified holy ancestor from its funereal repose. Rozerie, the Monday Regent of the Hacienda, will pay you to take care of it before the Tuesday Regent hears about it.
The brother of one of Dead Ohache’s kidnapping victims has put out an exceedingly generous standing offer to anyone who can rescue his sibling from the Dead Man’s mines.
A scholar in Otra Tetuán is writing a necrography of Dead Ochache and wants to know why the Sheikha and Sheikh of the Dead have given him permission to reside in the Lands of the Living. The University is backing up their research with a reward.
Pirate-cleric Sayyida al Hurra wants a crack at Dead Ohache’s treasure, and she wouldn’t mind exorcising him either. Figure out where he keeps his vault and not only will she pay you, but she’ll let you come along on the heist for a share of the spoils.
Rumor has it some rebels are getting ready to raid Dead Ohache’s sanguinary. Both sides are putting out an all call for anyone who can pick up a weapon.
There is a particular and exceedingly beautiful flower that grows in the yard of Dead Ixe, Ohache’s bitterest rival. He wants a cutting so he can grow it for himself.

June 29, 2016 jacinto Uncategorized

les petites mortes

Lately I have been thinking about the excellent Last Gasp Grimoire, that most estimable house of ick, so have some gross monsters to tide you over until +Logan Knight ‘s terrible return.

The Saints of Honey and Salt are a faction of horrific holy biomantic sybarites. Their Houses of Honey and Salt are hospital-brothel-temple-laboratories where you can get just about any disease or injury cured, but also might get abducted and turned into goo. They might bring you back from the brink of death, or they might make your life the plot of The Thing and Fatal Attraction at the same time.

Players can also go to a House of Honey and Salt for extreme body modification–swapping ability scores, gaining claws/fangs (and natural attacks), gaining ogre strength*, or receivingany cosmetic alteration within natural human range, and a few that aren’t.

Anyway, here are some enemies and monsters a party of characters might run into if they fall afoul of the Saints.

Saints of Honey and Salt

These are the saints you are most likely to meet in the street or the temple: the spies, the courtiers, the paramours, the healers.

Stats as dervish. Following abilities are cumulative with each rank:

Servant: Can whisper Commands at will.
Saint: +1 HD. Victims take d6 damage per round of skin-to-skin contact, no Save.
Ecstatic: +2 HD. Can cast Charm Person at will on anyone standing close enough to smell their perfume (spear range)
Delectator: +3 HD. Can cast Inflict Poison at melee range at will.
Revelator: +4 HD. Immune to normal and silver weapons; only takes damage from cursed weapons and weapons coated with someone else’s blood.

Hierophant of Bliss

Ancient Saints that have cast off any pretense of humanity. They are huge–eight or nine feet–and beautiful in a toxic sort of way, appealing like too-ripe fruit just before the first traces of rot reveal themselves. They are ogre-strong and frequently responsible for brewing a temple’s supply of poisons and drugs.

Stats, abilities, attacks as troll. Fire and acid do not halt health regeneration, but weapons coated with someone else’s blood do.

Casts spells as 6th level cleric. Always memorizes Fuse, a third level spell that causes the target to permanently combine with the next creature they touch as a chimera (save vs petrification to avoid, can be resolved with Remove Curse)
Can heal a target for 1d6 HP by wounding itself (1d6 damage) and spraying them with the resulting blood, aspergilium-style.

Hungry Chrism

from Dark Souls 3

Sometimes, the ecstatic alchemical regimens of the Saints fail, and an acolyte becomes a quantity of Hungry Chrism (also known as holy slime, saintsblood, the Velvet Blessing) instead. In its true form, Hungry Chrism is the red of fresh blood, mucus-thick and bubbling with intent. It smells of rotting meat, jasmine, and sweat.

Holy Chrism generally remains loyal to the Saints of Honey and Salt, but its alien intelligence and traumatic birth makes it an unreliable ally–it is most often destroyed or sealed away in casks for particular tasks.

Stats as grey ooze, cannot deal damage, but enjoys a +4 bonus to grapple attempts.

Incarnation
Hungry Chrism at first appears as a person it has consumed, perhaps a little healthier and attractive than before, perhaps a little more bright-eyed and flushed. When a Hungry Chrism sheds its disguise, hidden seams open up around its skin, and its flesh unwinds itself from around its bones, oozing to the floor and leaving a clean skeleton behind. So long as it is still attached to a skeleton, it can assume the form of any creature it has consumed (as the Polymorph spell)

Assumption
If Hungry Chrism succeeds an attack roll after it has successfully grappled a creature, it forces itself into their body through their mouth, nose, eyes, and pores. There, it begins to insinuate itself through their tissue, replacing their substance with its own. So long as the Chrism lives in the victim, all natural and magical healing restores twice as many HP. However, once the total amount of HP healed exceeds the victim’s maximum HP, the Chrism has completely replaced their body, and the victim becomes an NPC Hungry Chrism with +1 HD and several more gallons of volume.

Expelling Hungry Chrism is beyond all but the most powerful magic or direct intervention by the Saints of Honey and Salt. However, the Chrism’s growth can be halted by cursing the victim–hexed flesh is immune to the slime’s ability to assimilate.

Beast Saints

A Saint of Honey and Salt can make you believe anything. Sometimes when the Saints have captured an enemy of great physical strength, they subject them to a mind-crushing mutagenic process, making the victim frightfully strong, utterly loyal to the Saints, and subject to the delusion that they themselves have become an animal. These Beast Saints primarily serve as guards, but they might be used to track down a refugee or sold as a novelty to (staggeringly) wealthy clients.

Beast Saints are naked humans, bodies distended with muscle. Their limbs are altered so that they can run on easily on all fours as they can on two.

Stats and attacks as werewolf. Cannot spread lycanthropy. Immune to normal weapons and silvered weapons; take damage from weapons coated in blood that is not their own. Can spider climb.

*Gauntlets of Ogre Power/Strength are vague in what they do or strictly mechanical. My rule for characters with inhuman strength doesn’t modify their ability scores at all: You can easily perform any feat of Strength a normal human is capable of and automatically succeed all such Strength checks. You only need to make Strength checks for tasks that would surpass the abilities of a single person. You can carry twice as many objects without being encumbered, as well. This does not confer any bonuses to combat. Initially came up with this for my Bound Djinni class.

February 8, 2016 jacinto Uncategorized

san serafín backgrounds

Might be getting some new school players next time I run San Serafín, so here are some analogues to the traditional fantasy races so as not to shock them with race as class.

Lilim are like elves/tieflings, styled off of the Jadis from The Magician’s Nephew
Gatikos are like haflings/gnomes/wood elves
Tragafuegos are like dragonborn/tieflings/dwarves

Children of Eve
A clan descended from the children of Adam and Eve. They are regular humans.

Will To Live: Humans die when they reach -4-level HP, rather than the normal -4 HP.
Quick Study: Humans usually have some sort of brief career before turning to adventuring life. Each has a skill (Baking, Smithing, Dancing, Poetry). They can perform the basics without trouble, and for difficult applications must roll equal to or less than 1+Intelligence modifier on a d6 to succeed. They may support themselves using this trade between adventures if they wish.
Lucky Bastards: Humans receive a +1 bonus to saving throws.

Lilim

A clan descended from the child of Lilith and Adam. They are tall and beautiful and deeply unlovely. They are not native to El Sur, but came here centuries ago on barges of black glass and golden filigree. The lilim are cousins of monsters, inventors of magic, feared for the power of their aesthetic. Lilim are always Chaotic.

Monstrous Youth: Lilim do not age once they reach adulthood.
Kin to Monsters: Lilim receive a +1 to Reaction rolls when dealing with other creatures descended from Lilith.
Ancient Memory: If a lilim is particularly old, they might be able to recall information from Back In The Day. To successfully remember something that occurred longer than a natural human lifetime ago, they must roll equal to or less than 1+ ⅓ level on a d6.

Gatikos

A clan founded by a cat-loving saint. Widely known for their false cat ears, which they wear out of deeply rooted personal conviction.

Graceful: Gatikos can squeeze through any space a child could and count as half their weight when determining if a surface or structure can support them.
Dreadful Appetite: Gatikos can subsist twice as long off of seafood-based rations and cannot get sick from mundane, food-borne illnesses
Nose For Trouble: Gatikos hone their sense of smell from a young age. If they have smelled something before, they can track it by odor if it has passed through in the last hour. This is not infallible, and a gatiko must roll equal to or less than 1+⅓ level on a d6 to successfully track.

Tragafuegos

A clan founded by a djinn. They season their food with the toxic red salts found on the slopes of volcanoes in El Sur. Their breath is cool and mineral, and they have developed strange tolerances due to their diet.

Breath Weapon: Tragafuegos can ignite their breath with a source of flame. They can use this as a breath attack (d8 damage, range as spear, save for half damage).
Strange Appetite: Tragafuegos can use flasks of oil as rations.
Fireproof: Tragafuegos reduce all fire damage they take by 6.