Just a Flesh Wound

Black Hacking done right

In a Black Hack supplement that I'm working on, I've decided to use a hybrid Race/Class system. Every player chooses two 'Types' for each character with some being Races and some Classes. Human is the default as usual, so they end up with two classes and non-Humans get one.

Originally I was thinking along traditional HP lines, and having the highest HD of the two classes be the one the character used, in much the same manner gestalt characters in 3e take the best option. However, I want to Usage Die all the things, so let's do that with HP:

A character's health is represented by two Usage Dice (one from each Type), one of which is chosen to be the 'Flesh Wounds' die, the other becomes the 'Mortal Wounds die'. Whenever an attack penetrates the character's armor, make a Usage Die roll. On a 1 or 2 step the Usage Die down one die type as usual. If a player attempting to dodge rolls a critical failure, the Usage Die is automatically stepped down one.

If the Flesh Wounds die is a d4 and would be stepped down, that die is no longer used and the character is considered 'Bloodied'. Bloodied characters have disadvantage on all attribute checks. When the Mortal Wounds die is reduced below a d4, the character is OoA.

A character will likely have two different sizes of die, and it is up to the player to choose which will be Flesh/Mortal. It is probably best to make the larger die the Mortal Wounds die, though some players may wish to make a character that can take more Superficial Wounds before becoming Bloodied.

A short rest increments one HD up one step (a lost HD increments to a d4), a long rest increments two steps (these can be split between either Flesh/Mortal dice as desired).

'Backstab' needs adjusting now, but right now it will likely be an automatic crit against whichever HD the Assassin wishes to target.

The Osteogramophones of Doktor Zosimus

The osteogramophonic device allows the operator to record the very essence of a subject onto a sheet of film via picture and sound. Sadly, unless the subject is re-imprinted posthaste, it is a destructive process that leaves the subject in a catatonic state from which there is no return.*

Once the record has been obtained, it may be imprinted on another subject of the operator's choice at a later date.  It is advised that the imprinting portion of the process is undertaken with due diligence and care:

First, one must insure the discs are not damaged, lest the information be corrupted in some manner. Depending upon the extent of the damage, the recipient may be rendered insane, horribly maimed, or killed outright.

Secondly, one must consider the choice of creature upon which the record will be imprinted, as some are less resilient than others to the mental and physical stresses incurred. The best match for imprinting will always be the original subject, and as such the second best choices are creatures of similar form and temperament. Since the recipient's skeletal structure will shift as necessary to accommodate the newly imprinted form, beginning with a similar morphology will only serve to reduce the immense trauma.

If one desires to imprint a record upon a different human, it is advised that the recipient is prepared by having their essence removed via the osteogramophonic process in order to reduce the risk of psychotic break.

*There are rumors that the good Doktor produced an improved version before his disappearance, but these have yet to be confirmed.

The OSRegon Trail: Save vs Dysentery

I have a somewhat macabre tradition of re-watching the Ric Burns documentary American Experience: The Donner Party to celebrate the first snowfall of the year. It's an excellent example of the genre, and I could go on and on about it, but I won't. I can say with little doubt that it has influenced the way I have been running the food scarcity in the 'miserycrawl' module Deep Carbon Observatory. During this year's viewing I couldn't help but think of the Oregon Trail as a prototypical example not only of the miserycrawl, but of the 0-level 'funnel' adventures used by Dungeon Crawl Classics, and the resource-management and lethality of early-edition D&D.

Now, suitably inspired, I'm working on The OSRegon Trail, a D&D setting hack that intends to capture the pioneer experience during the westward expansion across North America.

Savages of the Abyss: 2076

2076...

Nearly a century after the hive-block food riots,

and the robo-holocaust incited by rogue supercomputer Blue Max,

Earth's oceans are almost dry...

Humanity ekes out an existence on the oceans' abyssal plains,

beset on all sides by an endless array of horrors:

Giant, floating Death-Heads,

Kill-Bots,

flesh-eating Sub-Humans,

and the Super-Apes...

Are the mysterious Clones here to help us,

 or are they servants of M.A.M.A, the crazed doomsday satellite?

Is the seed-ship Arkadia merely a fairy tale that brings hope,

or will it return to restore the planet to her former glory?

Bunnies & Boroughs

Working on a D&D setting hack that's equal parts Wind in the Willows and The Warriors:

Bunnies & Boroughs Gang Generator

d20	Style	Animal	Weapon	Turf	Side Racket
1	Roller Disco	Badgers	Nunchaku	Warehouse	Fake Rolexes
2	Biker	Hedgehogs	Baseball Bats	Bodega	Unlicensed nightclub
3	Zoot Suit	Rabbits	Brass Knuckles	Playground	Grand theft auto
4	Glam Rock	Squirrels	Bicycle Chains	Movie Theater	Bookies
5	Cossack	Mice	Zip-guns	Community Center	Three-card Monte
6	Skinhead	Gophers	Switchblades	Basketball Court	Grow operation
7	Indian	Dogs	Lead Pipes	Park	Loan sharking
8	Mod	Cats	Kung-fu	Taxi Company	Food stamp fraud
9	Egyptian	Goats	Balisongs	Boardwalk	Prostitution
10	Cyber	Bears	Hockeysticks	Museum	Stealing TVs
11	Luchadore	Pigs	Umbrellas	Baseball Field	Graffiti
12	Pirate	Weasels	Garrison Belts	High School	Doo-Wop group
13	Edwardian	Cows	Linoleum Knives	Subway Station	Heroin
14	Sultanate	Sheep	Rolls of Quarters	Ferry Terminal	Craps game
15	Mandarin	Foxes	Machetes	Abandoned Lot	Hubcaps & car stereos
16	Vampire	Rats	Pool Cues	Parking Garage	Robbing delivery trucks
17	Punk	Wolves	Peaky Blinders	Trainyard	House party impresarios
18	Hip-Hop	Skunks	Straightrazors	Swimming Pool	Diversified: Re-roll twice
19	Viking	Beavers	Dynamite	Candy Store	Small-time: Re-roll, racket is boroughwide
20	Ninja	Moles	Dance!	Gang Clubhouse	Big-time: Re-roll, racket is citywide

Exploring Other Systems

About a month ago, after suggesting 13^th Age during a discussion about carrying more than just D&D and Pathfinder products at our FLGS, I got nominated to run it in the store... Now, as a DM I usually don't run games in the fantasy genre. It's not that I don't like fantasy, but if anything could be considered the 'default genre' for RPGs, it's fantasy. There's a lot of it out there. The same goes for D&D and systems derived from D&D, they generally don't need my help. Luckily, I enjoy world-building and seeing how different systems work, and that should keep me engaged enough.

Since this is an in-store open-table type of game, I want to showcase the cool things that make the system different. According to the rulebook, these are the “one unique thing, icon relationships, and background mechanics”.

The 'one unique thing' is one of the ideas that 13^th Age has cribbed from shared-narrative style systems à la FATE. It's cool I guess, but where 'aspects' are integral and mechanical in FATE, here it's explicitly stated that there should be no mechanical benefit. It's mainly intended to help the DM come up with plots related to the PCs' backstories. As a general rule, I tailor my whole campaign to the characters involved and this feature would be somewhat redundant for me, but since this is an open table and I don't want to be too myopic in scope, I'll probably use the one unique thing more than I might under other circumstances. That said, it's a good tool for getting backstory from players who aren't interested in doing homework, and it's certainly nice to have a concise statement from the ones who love to write a ton.

One of the things that I wanted to see in action was 13^th Age's icon system. Basically, they are the most important NPCs in the setting (think Elminster in Forgotten Realms), NPCs whose absence would cause a major shift in the power balance of the setting. Players assign relationship points to these icons and roll that number of d6s at the beginning of each session to see if they can leverage the connection. The icon system itself can be dialed up or down to work with everything from the village elders to a pantheon of gods.

The icons as presented in the rules are based on classic fantasy tropes, and as such they are fairly bland. The good news is that the writers “expect each GM to tinker with the icon identities to suit the campaign’s story”. Now I feel completely justified in doing a complete overhaul of the icons. I'll post write-ups of the icons as they appear in my campaign in a subsequent entry.

The background mechanic is a nice simple way to do skills, but it's basically a beefed-up version of secondary skills from AD&D with the players making up their own instead of choosing/rolling on a table. This is also intended to provide fluff for the DM to incorporate into the game, though it seems to be a mixed bag. Even when prompted to embellish their backgrounds, most of my players are hewing towards fairly skill list-ish ones rather than going big with the fluff.

The best use I've found for the backgrounds so far is as an easy way to tailor the base classes. One player wanted to be an Arcane Archer, and rather than find/make a homebrew class, it was much easier to just have the player take enough points in Arcane Archer to offset the negatives to-hit that a Sorcerer has when using a longbow.

Next time I'll discuss my setting more, and especially how the stock icons have been changed to suit it.

The Groundaugur

GROUNDAUGUR

FREQUENCY: Very rare
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOUR CLASS: 7
MOVE: 3"
HIT DICE: 1
% IN LAIR: 99%
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: Nil
DAMAGE/ATTACK: Nil
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Nil
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil

MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard

INTELLIGENCE: Very

ALIGNMENT: Neutral

SIZE: S (2½' long)

PSIONIC ABILITY: 182

Attack/Defense Modes: Nil

Every so often a psionic groundhog is born, possessing animal telepathy, empathy, precognition, and telempathic projection. Known as groundaugurs, they are exceptionally reclusive creatures, rarely venturing from their burrow. Because of their scarcity and the fact that they appear to be normal groundhogs, a number of disputed claims have been made regarding their nature: their precognitive ability only applies to weather patterns, they can only make predictions once per year, they have the ability to trap a person in limbo, etc.