hex culture adventures, amateur hour, Uncategorized

through dark of night

Break!! is coming out soon. The draft pdf is very good and I want to run it. Put together a little setting sketch/player brief that remixes the default setting a little. I wanted to do something that made a West Marches-esque game that enables easy drop-in / drop-out but also longer arcs, so I busted the four primary zones in Break up into Spelljammer-esque planes and put a simple pathcrawl on top of them. Players can pick from a list of jobs and missions designed to be finished in 1-2 sessions.

Intro

The Cosmos is broken up into innumerable worlds, all but inaccessible to each other. However, the brave and knowledgeable may voyage between them on the interdimensional Sea of Erebus. It is a vast and jewel-black abyss with a sparse scattering of Stations that permit entry into their respective worlds.

You are the crew of an ancient celestial craft able to traverse the perilous waters of Erebus: a legendary heavenliner. It looks something like an old-fashioned passenger ship and something like an Art Deco cathedral. It is your perilous and lucrative job to ferry passengers and carry cargo from world to world.

Starlines

Starlines are currents of aether that link the Station of every world in Erebus. They are visible as golden threads, just beneath the surface of Erebus’ waters. The starline that links the four Known Worlds is called the Crescent Line. The Halfmoon Line once linked the two farthest worlds, the Blazing Garden and the Wistful Dark, and allowed access to the Worlds Beyond, but it has long since been lost.

Worlds and their Stations

There are four Known Worlds: the Blazing Garden, the Buried Kingdom, the Twilight Meridian, and the Wistful Dark (i.e. the four primary zones in Break!!). They were once one world, but some long-passed cataclysm wrenched them apart and scattered them across Erebus.

Each world has a Station on the Crescent Line. They are enormous, beautiful buildings, constructed lovingly by an unknown hand, and each contains a gateway to their respective world.

  • Wistful Dark’s Station Lamentorum: An elegant neo-Gothic confection illuminated by indigo lamps and crowned by a clocktower. The worldside Station is a vine-swathed ruin in the Shadowed Lands, meaning that importing goods into and out of the Wistful Dark requires a lengthy caravan journey. A bustling caravanserai has cropped up around the worldside Station, but it faces the bandits and undead that make their home in the Shadowed Lands. Rumor has it that the Erebus-side Station contains a hidden sub-basement where the Unshaped hid some fabulous artifact.
  • Twilight Meridian’s Station Nubium: An immense pavilion built from fragrant wood of an unknown tree, illuminated with heatless braziers that burn rosy pink and pale purple. The worldside Station is a well-tended, albeit much smaller twin located not far outside the capital of the Seven Holy Isles, guarded (and taxed) by the Shogun’s court. Rumor has it that somewhere in the Pavilion’s mazelike chambers lies a coffin containing an ingenious shipwright imprisoned eternally for defying the gods before their banishment.
  • Buried Kingdom’s Station Ingenii: A Cyclopean edifice blanketed with moss and lichen, illuminated poorly with fireflies and luminescent fungus. The worldside Station is a totally unmanaged grotto, and all manner of precious goods, illicit or otherwise, spill in and out of the bazaar that has sprung up in its vicinity. Rumor has it that Station Ingenii’s depths contain some hint of the fate of the long-lost giants.
  • Blazing Garden’s Station Crisium: A palatial monument of red sandstone and embellishments in gold and branching red coral. Its worldside Station is part of an extensive dragonshrine complex in Taaga, which mediates between heavenliner crews and the worldside community of merchants doing brisk business. Rumor has it that the gardens that line the Erebus-side Station bloom with mythological herbs and flowers once every hundred years.
Image by NASA. Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Demimondes

Some worlds are small enough to float on the surface of Erebus without a Station. They might be artificial, constructed by asura, deva, or especially powerful sorcerers, or fragments of ancient worlds eroded down to wandering islands.

The most famous demimonde is the Lantern House, constructed by Sagess Saith as a hotel for affluent travelers of Erebus. Her magic, aligned with shadow, flame, and smoke, maintained the Halfmoon Line. When the Lantern House went dark some centuries ago, the Halfmoon Line vanished with it. Bringing light back to the Lantern House could restore the Line, but voyaging into the gulf between worlds with only dead reckoning and a determined crew would require a surpassingly talented navigator. This is to say nothing of confronting whatever power extinguished the Lantern House to begin with.

Lost Worlds

Through the Halfmoon Line are the Lost Worlds, half-remembered through centuries of isolation.

  • Malian, the profane cosmopolis built into a fathomless borehole rumored to reach into Hell. Almost anything can be bought here, but almost nothing is ultimately worth the price.
  • Myrkholt, an archaic land ruled by nobles and knights. It is endlessly endangered by the beasts of the forest depths, and it is haunted by the legacy of its immortal monarch, the Once and Future King.
  • Carillon, a land of stargazing scholars and fanatical exorcists. At war with beings from beyond the stars, and home to technology that rivals the Old Iron Kingdom in its heyday.

Jobs

I’m incredibly disinterested in simulating arbitrage, so this is going to be a bit simplified. You get paid for worlds traveled and the type of job. You can only take one job at a time. If I accidentally jacked up the math (likely) this may get adjusted.

  • Standard Deliveries just mean you need to keep the cargo intact and get to the destination at some point. You will get paid unless you really fuck around.
  • Express Deliveries have a deadline, usually a number of days equal to how many worlds away the destination is. If you don’t reach the destination in time, you don’t get paid, and you might piss off somebody important.
  • Standard and Express Passengers follow the same rules as Standard and Express Deliveries, except also you need to keep the passenger alive and reasonably comfortable.
  • VIP Passengers follow the same rules as above except the passenger expects a higher level of accommodation and comfort and more dangerous people want them dead. If you fail an Express VIP job you are in Big Trouble.
  • Single-world hops generally require some additional work or trouble, like delivering a package or escorting a passenger to a location within the world, not just its Station, or fending off a specific party that wants what you are delivering. If multi-world hops require this, pay is doubled.
Worlds AwayStandard DeliveryExpress DeliveryStandard PassengerExpress PassengerStandard VIPExpress VIP
1100 coins200 coins500 coins1 gem2 gems5 gems
2200 coins500 coins1 gem2 gems5 gems10 gems
3500 coins1 gem2 gems5 gems10 gems20 gems
4+ Worlds1 gem2 gems5 gems10 gems20 gems50 gems

The Heavenliner

You and your followers are the crew. You don’t answer to anyone, but you need to pay your own way in terms of food and fuel.

Decide on a name for the heavenliner.

Right now, you can only access the helm, the main deck, and the cargo hold, but it is more than enough to fit lucrative cargo, yourself, and your possessions. You can hire and artificer to cut a key to open more decks and quarters in the heavenliner, which gives you access to more resources, room for cargo, and facilities. A key costs as much as the facility it unlocks takes to buy (check the Property section of the rulebook). The heavenliner is a demimonde unto itself, so you’ll never run out of space if you’re willing to pay for it.

  • You can cut keys for workshops. Otherwise you need to rent one worldside.
  • You need to cut a key for a kitchen and hut-equivalent quarters before you can take on passengers
  • You need to cut a key for kitchens and townhouse-equivalent quarters before you can take on VIP passengers.
  • You need to cut a key for a livestock deck (costs as much as a townhouse) before you get mounts or pack animals.
  • You need to cut a key for a moonpool (costs as much as a townhouse) before you can carry vehicles.
  • You can increase the heavenliner’s inventory by 20 slots for the cost of a hut.

Travel

Follow Journey Procedure while traveling Erebus. It takes a day to get from one Station to the next (at least on the Crescent Line).

The Heavenliner can carry 40 slots. A job requires 20 in terms of parcels, passengers, and their effects. If you eschew a job and just want to explore, you can carry more supplies.

The heavenliner drinks aether from the Sea of Erebus; you need to keep yourselves fed, watered, and hale, but fuel is not an issue.

hex culture Uncategorized

Complex Sequence

My buddy Jackson and I put together an itch.io storefront with our backlog of work. You can check it out here if you want. It has A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet, which I wrote WAY back in the G+ days and hasn’t been available for a couple a years, plus the amazing Brushwood Lullabies and PILGRIM by Jackson. Everything is PWYW, and currently we plan to keep it that way.

I really can’t bear to do the promotion game as it probably should be done, but we’ve put a lot of work into these various projects and maybe somebody might like them and also they can be had for free if people so choose, so here we are:

The itch page also has a bundle with two new zine-sized games I’ve been working on a while. I put them together because they’re both playtested-but-experimental and in a form that is complete but not necessarily final (if I have the gas, I want to come back and gussy up the layout and maybe get some more art in them).

One, called Pretender Complex, is an improved version of this PvP PbP Fate game I put together for my friends during (what was for me) some of the roughest times during pandemic isolation. In retrospect, it was an interesting exercise in thinking through what I design towards. It was a profoundly ugly time in my life, both because of personal tragedy and worldwide catastrophe, and what I really wanted was to make a game that fit as comfortably as possible into what was going on in people’s lives. An asynchronous game designed about remote play seemed really appealing because of how hard it seemed to “be on” as a human being (especially on camera), and I think my players liked making requests for historical characters to drop into the game. Accordingly, a lot of the game is much more about how to handle the logistics and juggle the needs of a bunch of people than it is about genre stuff or mechanics per se. I definitely don’t think the game is like a noble exercise in virtue or anything like that, but I did find myself thinking about kindness or respect for people’s time as something to design towards a little more. I’m not sure that it succeeded on any of these counts, and the zine itself is a little rough, but it’s finished and you can read it.

The other, called Descender Complex, started as an actual joke: what if you used a Sudoku board as a representation for character abilities?

A picture of a 4 by 4 Sudoku board with a Discord message that reads "Devil Brain Idea: crunchy magic item system that involves getting runes or whatever as treasure that you slot into a simplified sudoku square that varies per character"

Riffing on this turned out to be actually pretty fun, as was making a bunch of overwrought JRPG playbooks. I also stuck in another idea I had been keeping on the back burner, which is a tactics-heavy combat system that focuses on the interesting decisions that arise from B/X’s phased initiative system rather and deprioritizes other conventional tactical elements like granular spacing. The playtest actually went really well, and the phased initiative and simplified movement made pandemic-required online play quite pleasant. There’s a lot more tactics, character customization, and board game vibes than what I normally do, but overall it really seems to work.

a character sheet for Nathaire, the Student of the Snake.

These are the first two projects I’ve finished since 2016, which is pretty wild to think about. I hope you like them.

hex culture Uncategorized

building a better freak

Been reading / thinking about Choujin X and Chainsaw Man, and also Masks (the PbtA superhero game). I had a fun time playing it with my friends, but it felt a little overeager to steer us into the drama stuff and not as interested as I would have liked in the doing cool/gruesome shit (I’m not huge into cape comic stuff, but one of the compelling things to me about it is freakishness, which Masks feels like it shies away from even as it provides it as an option). The thing about mechanizing all of the conflict is that I’m not sure how much the mechanics are actually doing; if somebody is willing to lean into character beats and personal conflict, they’re probably going to do so regardless of how many Moves support it. I do like thespian club high drama bullshit, but I don’t like being led by the nose.

So anyway, I wrote this up with these things in mind: a light mechanical framework for a high-ick superhero-type game in the vein of Choujin X or Chainsaw Man that lets players jump into the genre emulation stuff if they want to. It’s not like…mechanically ingenious, but I suspect it will at least work for a few fun games with my players.

Concept

In the decades after the failed Apocalypse, the broken war machines and defeated soldiers of Heaven and Hell sublimated into the soil and water and air of Earth, leaching even into the bodies and blood of a busily (if miserably) rebuilding humanity. Some lucky few found themselves with influence over the world once reserved for the supernal and infernal: Decrees, the entitlement to govern worldly phenomena dispensed by Heaven to angels before the Fall.

Think: hyperindustrial near-future, an island-metropolis where you can find anything whether your want to or not, superpowered mercenaries who nonetheless have day jobs, the restoration of everyday life after many years of privation and destruction, scientists dissecting angels in government laboratories, smugglers with lead canisters full of demon hearts, old battlefields covered with salt statues of soldiers half-submerged in iridescent slicks of black metal, slowly drifting away from what is familiar and friendly in your life to something dark and unknown but perhaps not entirely undesirable

PCs are once-regular people who found themselves with Decrees living in the Autonomous City San Serafin, built after the Apocalypse and a place where all things converge.

Checks

When you do something difficult, risky, or unpredictable, roll 2d6. If the highest die is a 1-3, you fail. If it’s a 4-5, you succeed at a cost: your goals are only partially achieved, you pay a cost, or suffer a complication. If it’s a 6, you succeed.

You can roll an extra die if on the whole your characteristics and the situation are favorable. You must roll one fewer die if on the whole your characteristics and the situation are unfavorable. If it’s ambiguous, default to 2d6.

Using your Decree is always difficult, risky, or unpredictable.

Characteristics

Pick 2 from each list below. You can’t pick two characteristics in the same row, e.g. being perceptive and oblivious at the same time.

strongweak
toughfrail
quickslow
knowledgeableignorant
streetwisenaive
perceptiveoblivious
intimidatingwallflower
deceitfulguileless
persuasiveunlikable
reputableirreputable
wealthyimpoverished

Pick 1 from the list below.

  • Waiter
  • construction worker
  • burglar
  • student
  • assassin
  • bureaucrat
  • farmer
  • hacker
  • actor
  • poet
  • journalist
  • carpenter
  • welder
  • doctor
  • nurse
  • EMT
  • painter

Resisting

When you resist something happening to you that you don’t want to happen, make a check like normal.

The GM doesn’t roll; players either avoid adverse situations or make Resist rolls against them. 

Damage

By default, you can survive 8 Harm. Default damage you take is 2; it can be reduced to 1 or 0 by resist rolls or increase to 3 or 4 by difficult circumstances and strong enemies.

Similarly, default Harm you cause is 2; it can be reduced to 1 or 0 by tough enemies or increased to 3 or 4 by good plans.

Comebacks

from Choujin X

If reduced to 0 Hits, make a Resist check. If you succeed, say something you found out about the nature of your Decree while you were so close to death, and regain half your hits.

If you fail, you’re taken out until your allies can get you to a safe place. If your whole team gets taken out, you wake up in a worse situation.

Divinity

Your Decree gives you power over…

from Chainsaw Man
  1. Scissor
  2. Mirror
  3. Paper
  4. Ink
  5. Smoke
  6. Dream
  7. Snake
  8. Fox
  9. Octopus
  10. Nightingale
  11. Moth
  12. Flower
  13. Shadow
  14. Ribbon
  15. Needle
  16. Moonlight
  17. Bronze
  18. Clay
  19. Memory
  20. Mirage

Your Decree works by means of…

  1. Touch
  2. Incantations
  3. Gestures
  4. Agonizing exertions of pure willpower
  5. Summoned familiars
  6. Symbols you write
  7. Your body changing its shape
  8. Tools, implements, or weapons
  9. A being that inhabits your body
  10. Your blood

It is your Decree’s nature to be…

(Roll once to determine a positive nature on the left, then pick any two negative natures that don’t share the row of the positive nature. Your power cannot be swift-acting and slow at the same time, for example).

(These don’t have precise mechanical effects but will come up as you use your powers, especially when you roll failures or partial successes).

1Swift-actingslow
2Long-lastingephemeral
3Potentweak
4Preciseuncontrollable
5Mercurialpredictable
6Sustainableexhausting
7Cooperativemalicious
8Respectabledisturbing
from Choujin X

Unfortunately, your power has complicated your everyday life by…

  1. Permanently altering your body’s shape and/or appearance in some troubling or inconvenient way
  2. Frightening or angering the people in your life or community
  3. Attracting the attention of an organization that wants to use your talents for its own ends
  4. Attracting the special attention of an organization that kills people with your talents
  5. Requiring you to consume an unusual or illicit substance to survive 
  6. Killing someone significant, either to you personally or society at large, when it manifested

Example

The assumption is that we’re filling in the spaces a little, so if a Decree is NEEDLE and works by means of incantations and is slow and disturbing but potent, you could say that its owner can create needles that break through nearly anything, but they must clearly and precisely describe what they are trying to pierce. If they are gagged or unable to easily breathe, they can’t do anything out of the ordinary, but they could use their decree if bound or blinded.

Missions

Despite your ordinary day-to-day life, you are beholden to the Divinity School to carry out their dangerous business from time to time.

Location

  1. The Spearyards – industrial district. factories, laboratories, foundries, with substantial abandoned areas
  2. The Churchyards – historical and district, home to the University
  3. Campo Greco – rich residential District
  4. The Old Royal Park – huge park containing a small old-growth forest
  5. Madrugados – working class residential district
  6. The Esplanades – government district, as well as museums, theaters, cultural institutions

Duty

  1. Protect object
  2. Protect VIP
  3. Kidnap enemy
  4. Retrieve object
  5. Retrieve VIP
  6. Assassinate enemy
  7. Destroy object
  8. Surveil VIP
  9. Surveil enemy
  10. Surveil object

Object examples: flash drive of research data, briefcase of cash, demon heart, etc
VIP/ Enemy examples: company president, potential Divinity, ambassador, witness, etc

Rival

  1. Killy, whose decree is JAW. Disheveled young man with very sharp teeth in an oversized sweater; wears crime scene tape around his neck like a scarf. He can inflict a bite wounds of nearly any size on whatever he touches, and by tracing a line with his finger on something can make a mouth appear on it that bites what he wants and can speak for him if he wills it to.
  2. Traumerai, whose Decree is NIGHTMARE. Wears ruffled pinafores and big ribbon ties and vents monsters out of the gill slits on her temples, which usually take the form of wolfish stuffed animals with pitbull jaws, bat wings, and button eyes.
  3. Ursula, whose decree is CURSE. Always expressionless, with straight black hair and sensible black clothes. Attended by her familiars, Gog (black-clad, with a white mask) and Magog (white clad, with a black mask). If someone hears a condition stated by Gog and a consequence stated by Magog, it will come true for them and remain true indefinitely or the terms of the curse are met.
  4. Bellamy, whose Decree is NIGHTJAR. A sensible and politely brutal middle-aged man who dresses in suits and ties. Fights with incomprehensible speed and allegedly drinks blood.

Complication

  1. The job involves overcoming inordinately intense security
  2. The job involves infiltrating a high society event
  3. The job must not attract the attention of the general public
  4. The job must be done in a very short amount of time
  5. The job involves some serious law-breaking
  6. Multiple Divinities will be working to stop you

Advancement

When you have encountered three more reasons to become more than what you are such as encountering the true nature of your power while on the cusp of death, eating a demon heart, defeating an enemy who vastly outmatched you, making a true friendship, or radically changing the way you see the world under doubt and duress, you gain a Raise.

from Choujin X

A Raise lets you use your Decree to do something truly marvelous and grotesque: become an unstoppable monster, summon a god-slaying spear from the heavens, banish a city block to the Moon, whatever. You don’t need to roll to make it happen or do what you want, but it does have to be an outrageous display of power. You can use a Raise at any time, though doing so wantonly may attract hostile attention.

When you use a Raise, at the end of the session, talk with the GM and the other players about how your character has changed, and how they can use their Decree in ways they previously did not know were possible.

After the first Raise, it takes four reasons, after the second it takes five, and so on.

hex culture Uncategorized

SPACE WAVE BOSSA NOVA

Ziggy, by Alex Chalk

Played a session of Lancer playtest a while back, after getting really into the idea of building mecha and fighting in space and so on and so on. It was cool, but not quite to my taste. My group and I still wanted to play a mecha game though, so over a couple sessions of kludged-together S&W Whitebox and a bossa nova / acid jazz soundtrack, and a Very Anime session of Microscope, we ended up with these rules.

Major thanks to Alex, Jackson, and Andrew for the ideas and playtesting.

A quick overview of the setting:

  • The Twelve Noble Houses, led by their Space Generals, have rallied around the Galactic Empress in the wake of her defeating the APOCRYPHAL ENTITY that hounded humanity for so many centuries–despite the loss of the heir of House Bontemps and the Leaguelong Moonblade.
  • Cha Cha Feruz, duplicitous captain of the Judascariot, has been stirring up trouble as she looks for work for her motley mercenary gang (i.e. the players).
  • The miners of ultravaluable mineral Azoth rebel against their corporate overlords on the Remote Planet Hinterkrist, drawing in the vicious mercenary group Blackwood Corps.
  • MASTABA HOUSE, Habitation of the Dead, a moon-sized mechanism of unknown provenance, has appeared, along with a spacial and temporal anomaly, in orbit around the Gladiatorial Planet Einzkreiger.
  • PROTOZOAN ENTITIES: GEPETTO STRAIN, HILDEGAARD STRAIN, and ISAMBARD STRAIN pursue evolutionary agendas, deploy phagocytic weapons, coil and pulse in the darkness of space and the hidden ruins of the dead Golden Empire
  • Oriel, the ancient inventor-automaton, has begun unsealing their vaults to retrieve anti-FRAME weaponry in violation of a millennia-old treaty.
  • The esoteric melodies of MOON ORPHAN, mythic weapon and hated child of the Golden Empire, have been heard in the crackle of cosmic radiation, in the fluctuations of gravity wells of auspicious planets, in the static of the radio waves and the singing of children at their games.

Checks

When you attempt something difficult or risky that is not an attack, roll a  die and try to get a 4 or higher. The base die size is d4.

  • For every unique and compelling reason to succeed, increase your die size by one, up to d20.
  • For every unique and compelling reason to fail, decrease your die size by 1. If your cumulative die size is less than d4, roll an additional d4, and take the lower result.

Tags

A tag is an easy way to describe a creature, object or situation. A relevant tag counts as a reason to succeed or a reason to fail. For example, a FRAME with the [tricky] tag can count it as a reason to succeed when hacking an enemy, while a pilot with the [shaken] tag would have to count it as a reason to fail when trying to steady their aim and make a difficult shot.

While any tag can be used as a reason to succeed or fail as long as there’s a strong case for it, some are going to have a largely negative effect on the person or object they belong to. These tags are called conditions and are indicated with a minus sign (e.g. [-on fire], [-broken limb])

Not all tags are equally important. Minor tags and conditions can only be used as a reason to succeed once per scene, and are indicated by lower case letters, like [-rattled] or [-bruised]. Major tags and conditions can be used any number of times per scene and are indicated by capital letters, such as [-TERRIFIED] or [INVISIBLE].

Some tags are ambiguous, and can be used as both a reason to succeed and a reason to fail. A FRAME with the [berserk] tag might use it as a reason to succeed feats of violence and strength, while face it as a reason to fail when shielding allies or searching rubble for survivors.

Reasons to succeed and reasons to fail still count even if they are not described by a tag — tags are a shorthand, but they’re not necessarily a perfect description of all fictionally and mechanically significant factors in a situation. A player or Referee can make use of any relevant tag — a player could use an enemy’s [haywire] tag as a reason to succeed when attacking them, or a field’s [misty] tag as a reason to succeed when hiding.

Combat Rolls

When you attack something or someone else, roll 1d20 plus your weapon’s attack bonus. If you have more reasons to succeed than to fail, you have advantage. If you have more reasons to fail than to succeed, you have disadvantage.

  • 1: Enemy makes a move
  • 2-9: No effect
  • 10-15: deal 1 Harm
  • 16-18: deal 1 Harm, inflict a [-minor condition]
  • 19-20: deal 1 Harm, inflict a [-MAJOR CONDITION]

Major thanks to Brendan S of Necropraxis for this mechanic.

Critical Conditions

Legs for Days, by Alex Chalk

Whenever a FRAME takes Harm, it takes a special critical condition, representing its ability to function. If all critical conditions have been taken, and a FRAME suffers Harm, it is destroyed..

  • [-SCRATCHED UP]
  • [-DAMAGED]
  • [-DISABLED]

If a FRAME has Armor, it can absorb Harm, point-for-point, before taking critical conditions. Armor is restored at the beginning of each scene; conditions only go away by action taken by the player or changing circumstances — critical conditions require time and attention from a mechanic.

Character Creation

Pick a starting FRAME 

Each FRAME starts with a beneficial major tag, as well as some gear already built in, which does not encumber.

FRAME ClassSpecialtyBuilt-in Gear
Jackal-class[FAST]3 System Cores
Bastion-class[STRONG]3 enc of weapons
Strega-class[TRICKY]1 GRIMOIRE
Seraph-class[TOUGH]PLATE Field

Also pick a size: [SMALL], medium, or [LARGE]

Starting Gear

Pick 5 enc of gear. You can keep in storage, where it won’t encumber you and it’s safe, or in your loadout, where it encumbers you, but you can use it.

Melee Weapons

Weapon TypeENC.Attack Roll Bonus
Misericorde1+2
Gladius2+3
Brutale3+4
DOZER2+4, requires a running start

Ranged Weapons

Weapon Type ENC. Attack Roll Bonus
Procne1+1
Apollonian2+2
Balor3+3
DAEDALUS2+3, inflicts [-locked on] instead of Harm

Armor

Armor Type ENC.Protection
HIDE Field11 Harm
CHAIN Field22 Harm
PLATE Field33 Harm

System Cores

All Cores are 1 enc.

SystemEffect
Drive Core[swift] movement and acceleration
Impulse Core [precise] handling
Cloak Core[stealthy] maneuvers and effective concealment
AI Core[technical] boost to hacking and comms
Sensor Core[perceptive] scanning for hidden and distant targets
Force Core[powerful] feats of strength and violence

Drones

All drones require a 2 enc port / receiver on their FRAME.

  • GALATEA AutoDoll: a [fast] drone with built-in Sensors and a +1 ranged weapon. Can be damaged before it is destroyed.
  • ARIEL AutoDoll: a [tricky] drone with built-in Comms and a +1 ranged weapon. Can be damaged before it is destroyed.
  • CALIBAN AutoDoll: a [strong] drone with a built-in Drive and a +2 melee weapon. Can be grazed and damaged before it is destroyed.

GRIMOIREs

Esoteric mechanisms. A GRIMOIRE can be invoked as a reason to succeed at a relevant task within the FRAME’s normal capabilities any number of times per scene. Once per scene, a FRAME can use a GRIMOIRE to attempt a remarkable feat outside of its normal capabilities. All GRIMOIRES are 3 enc.

GRIMOIRE Domain
Plutogravity
Jupiterelectromagnetism
Lunalight and darkness
Oranosspace
Venusbiological matter
Psychethe mind, perception

Encumbrance

ENC. Effect
1-3no penalty
4-6[-BURDENED]
7-9[-BURDENED] and [-BULKY]
10+ [-BURDENED], [-BULKY], [-UNBALANCED]

FRAME Name

A mecha by Alex Chalk

It should be something cool. Past names include

  • Legs For Days
  • Les Fleurs du Mal
  • Chevalier Groovy
  • Master of Puppets
  • Struggle Theory
  • Amuse Bouche
  • Beast of Burden
  • Glory Be
  • Messiah Complex
  • Traje de Luces

Pilot

This one is a bit experimental, but people get out of their FRAMEs sometimes. For your pilot, pick

  • a one-word major tag that describes your pilot’s physical or intellectual aptitudes, like [CLEVER], [STRONG], [HOT], or [DEVIOUS].
  • a one-word major tag that describes your pilot’s personality, like [TEMPER], [PATIENT], or [EERIE]
  • a one-word minor condition that describes a flaw your pilot has, like [-forgetful], [-slovenly], or [-rude].

Why Are You Doing This

The idea is players can kit out their machines and pilots and be distinct and cool while fitting everything on some scratch paper, getting blown up is in the cards without needing to sit out a bunch of time and do character calculus, fights are tense but short, and you don’t need to know complicated rules to make your mecha concept work (pick the FAST mecha if you want to be fast — you don’t need to compare how many centimeters of grid one thruster moves you versus another).

Also, FRAMEs are short on built-in bonuses. The idea is that they’re chasing advantages in their situation, environment, relationships. This isn’t really a game about the fantasy of power — it’s about having means of survival and the ability to negotiate a place in a hostile world, rather than gouging one out with overwhelming force.

Things I want from a mecha game:

  • being able to kit out cool robots from session one
  • room for a lot of space opera drama
  • rules that support the fraught situations and hijinks of old school games.
  • being able to have people who aren’t neck deep in The Genre already jump in and have a good time
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.

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

ClassSkillSpecial Gear
BanditRimwiseFrag grenades (6), longarm of choice
MerchantRitesDraft hound and cargo sledge
EngineerMech. RepairTool kit (screwdrivers, wrenches, hammer, lockpicks)
DowserCreedWater Sense augmentation, ritual bell
FarmerHydroponicsMotorized hydroponics wagon
MedicFirst AidMedscanner, scalpel, automed (one dose)
WandererMilitary TrainingLongarm of choice, extra sidearm
AndroidComputersRandom ritual augmentation
ScrapperScavenging+1 Extra Ammunition, +1 Provisions, +1 Water
ScholarScholarshipField Recorder, Binoculars
……

Standard Gear List

ItemENCDescription
Sidearm1Pick one sidearm from the weapon list. If you want an additional or different sidearm, you’ll have to buy it.
Melee Weapon1Pick one melee weapon from the weapon list. If you want an additional or different melee weapon, you’ll have to buy it.
Mount0
Choose a mount from the mount list. If you want an additional or different mount, you’ll have to buy it.
Warm clothes0/2Clothing suited to cold weather. Encumbers if carried rather than worn.
Cool clothes0/2Clothing suited to hot weather. Encumbers if carried rather than worn.
Climbing Kit22 coils of rope, a dozen spikes, a mallet, crampons
Survival Kit2A knife, flint and tinder, compass, map, canteen
First Aid Kit2Bandages, 3 doses antiseptic, 3 doses antidote, 3 doses fortified liquor
Travel Kit2Tent, bedroll, mess kit, cooking gear, firestarter, lamp
Provisions1/2/3Up to three days’ worth of food, coffee, and tolerable liquor. Each day is 1 ENC.
Water calabash1/2/3Up to three day’s worth of water. Each day is 1 ENC.
Extra ammo1/2/3Each 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
SidearmDMGRNGShots
Lilit Model 13
1d1020/50/100 m6
Baruch Visitation3d102/10/50 m3
Ptolemy Cavalier2d1010/25/75 m8
Melee WeaponDMGRNGSpecial
Hardwood Knife1d10CQCCan be used while grappling
Ceramic Machete2d10CQCGood for hacking through vegetation
Ceramic Bayonet1d10CQCCan affix to any longarm
Ceramic Glaive2d102 mRequires two hand
LongarmDMGRNGShotsSpecial
Lilit
Helminth		2d1050/100/3005
Until receiving medical treatment, struck target suffers disadvantage on Body saves to recover HP or overcome infection.
Lilit Nightingale2d10100/500/1000
1
Makes almost no noise.
Baruch Seraph4d1010/25/75 m3½ damage to occult enemies normally immune to physical harm
Baruch Testament4d10
10/25/75 m3On a critical hit, target suffers disadvantage on their Fear save
Ptolemy Emissary3d1020/50/100 m8On a critical hit, target suffers 1d10 bleeding damage/round until bandaged
Ptolemy Chariot3d1020/50/100 m8Can reload 1 shot per round without taking a significant action.
…………

Mounts

MountCombatSpeedInstinctENCHit
Horse15454592
Draft Hound203550103
Mantid Nymph25751531
Ritual Marionette20454081

Ritual Augmentation

Metal pigment tattoos forming esoteric circuits for cranial and neurological stimulation, providing uncanny powers of perception and influence. Each ritual augmentation description lists the location of the tattoo, the permanent complication that results if the recipient fails a Body save during the administration of the augmention, and the effect of the augmentation when used.

Paying for higher quality materials and more competent surgeon-artists provides advantage on the Body save. Augmented characters may apply their Mysticism skill if they have it to any stat roll pertaining to use of the augmentation. Most augmentations except Water Sense will get you shunned, exiled, or executed, depending on the jurisdiction.

Suasion

Location
Back of head
Complication
Sanity save in presence of esoteric phenomena or suffer visual hallucinations
Effect
Requires eye contact to actuate. The target must make a Sanity save against the user’s Intellect or view user as friendly and appealing until they part company. Using Suasive augmentations successively on the same person makes it less effective; after the first successful Sanity save, a target becomes immune to this augmention from the same user, while failed saves confer advantage on subsequent saves.

Alethiometry

Location
Above and behind both ears
Complication
Sanity save in presence of esoteric phenomena or suffer total aphasia
Effect
The user can detect lies spoken in their presence at will. Written lies, lies transmitted electronically, or lies made in other languages and then translated into the speaker’s are not detectable. Very talented or esoterically gifted liars may be able to make a Sanity save to resist being caught.

Ignition

Location
Around the neck, centered on the throat
Complication
Can’t speak above a hoarse whisper
Effect
The user can subvocalize to ignite a human-sized or smaller creature or object within a 10 m cone in front of them. Creatures can make a Sanity save against the user’s Intellect to resist. Ignition deals 1d10 damage per round until extinguished.

Water Sense

Location
Back of tongue
Complication
Presence of large amounts of water causes migraines and visual auras
Effect
User can sense bodies of water within [Intellect] meters. Sensing water-based life forms or heavily adulterated bodies of water is possible, but requires an Intellect check with disadvantage. If given time to concentrate, the user can make Crisis Checks to extend the range (cumulative ×10 per Crisis Number). Using this ability attracts the attention of all esoterically sensitive entities within range.

Graviturgy

Location
Extending from temples to palms of hands
Complication
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

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.

by Moebius
by Moebius

Encounters

1Moon Court bounty hunter in clean tech Janissary Frame
60 HP, 60 Combat, 30 Instinct, 40 Armor, Military Training, double move rate while in Frame.
2Water 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
3Dog 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
4Emperor 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
5Bandit 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
6Elder 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
7House 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
8Pack of emperor jackals
Vicious, but susceptible to taming
(4): 45 HP, 45 Combat, 35 Instinct
9Wandering 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
10Holy 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.

from Suikoden Tierkris