mothership – hex culture

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.