Month: March 2026

Creating Klaus Kleinmann, the Creep

My Monstrous Mishaps quickstart now contains all the rules for playing the game, so all that remains is to write up a sample Story. But since Monstrous Mishaps works best when it’s very personalised – each character comes with specific plot hooks that are meant to be integrated into every Story – I think I’d better supply some pregenerated characters too. One each for the six Breeds that I first created (the skulking Creeps, the kleptomaniacal Hoarders, the put-upon Klutzes, the overzealous Jerkasses, the obnoxious Loudmouths and the shameless Moochers) will probably be best. I won’t be using all the stuff I generate, since the quickstart runs off a slimmed down version of the full rules, but it’ll be good to have a lot of material to choose from.

So, this week, let’s start with our Creep. First he needs to pick his Abilities, two at Basic (4), two at Limited (3), and two at Limited (2). Let’s say that he’s a conflict-averse nerd who prefers to run away from danger and give him Basic (4) Fitness and Basic (4) Hiding. He also reads a lot and has a good memory, so he’s got Limited (3) Nerdery, Limited (3) Weirdness, Limited (2) Paperpushing and Limited (2) Keenness. Being a Creep gives him +1 to Mindgames and Hiding, so adding that to what he’s already got (every Ability not chosen, of course, starts at Minimal (1)), he’s got Limited (2) Mindgames and Basic (5) Hiding.

I’m getting a pretty good image of our Creep now. I think I’m going to call him Klaus Kleinmann.

Next, we’ll consider Klaus’ lifepath. I figure that he had an older brother who used to bully him relentlessly for being so, well, Creepy, so he gets +1 to Asskicking for having had Mean Older Siblings. To add to his miseries, his parents thought he was weird and off-putting too and sent him to Military School, giving him a +1 to Grit. Perhaps they did him a favour, since I forgot my own sage advice of always starting a character with at least a few extra points in Grit. Finally, as an adult he’s become a boring file clerk, so he gets +1 to Paperpushing for being a Bureaucrat.

We quickly calculate his Derived Abilities from what we now know to be his Primary Abilities, and end up with:

Primary Abilities: Limited (2) Asskicking, Minimal (1) Camping, Minimal (1) Dramatics, Basic (4) Fitness, Limited (2) Grit, Basic (5) Hiding, Limited (2) Keenness, Limited (2) Mindgames, Limited (3) Nerdery, Limited (3) Paperpushing, Minimal (1) Schmoozing, Limited (3) Weirdness


Derived Abilities: Minimal (1) Bullshitting, Limited (2) E-Skills, Limited (2) Hocuspocus, Basic (4) Intrusion, Limited (3) Joyriding, Limited (2) Lawyering, Limited (2) Quackery, Limited (2) Rumours, Limited (3) Trickery, Limited (2) Understanding, Limited (2) Volume, Limited (3) X-Tremeness

Next up is Dooms. I think I want Klaus to have at least a little bit of skill with a Creep’s Primary Doom of Fae’s Trickery, so I’ll raise it to Limited (2). Klaus’ retiring personality is so strong that sometimes he can be oddly hard to spot. I also want him to be into making some weird art (hey, it’s something you can do all by yourself!), so I’ll also giving him Minimal (1) Devil’s Craft. That gives him a total Monstrosity Score of Limited (3), which also sets his beginning Respectability and Pretension Scores – both of them also at Limited (3). Klaus doesn’t stand out much either among Monsters or among regular people.

Given Klaus’ Abilities, he has 8 Health Points (X-Tremeness Score + 5), 7 Grit Points (Grit Score +5), 10 Stamina Points (Fitness Score + 5), 3 Budget Points (Respectability Score) and 3 Favour Points (Pretension Score).

For Values, I’m giving Klaus Harmony and Community. He really just wants to follow the rules, play it safe, and go about his day without offending anyone. Good luck with that, of course, given that Creeps have a Bane that causes them to automatically offend people just by drawing breath, but oh well.

That’s it for Klaus himself! His finished stats look like this:

KLAUS KLEINMANN

Breed: Creep

Childhood: Mean Older Siblings
Adolescence: Military School
Adulthood: Bureaucrat


Values: Harmony, Community

Primary Abilities: Limited (2) Asskicking, Minimal (1) Camping, Minimal (1) Dramatics, Basic (4) Fitness, Limited (2) Grit, Basic (5) Hiding, Limited (2) Keenness, Limited (2) Mindgames, Limited (3) Nerdery, Limited (3) Paperpushing, Minimal (1) Schmoozing, Limited (3) Weirdness

Derived Abilities: Minimal (1) Bullshitting, Limited (2) E-Skills, Limited (2) Hocuspocus, Basic (4) Intrusion, Limited (3) Joyriding, Limited (2) Lawyering, Limited (2) Quackery, Limited (2) Rumours, Limited (3) Trickery, Limited (2) Understanding, Limited (2) Volume, Limited (3) X-Tremeness

Special Abilities: Limited (3) Maze, Limited (3) Monstrosity, Limited (3) Pretension, Limited (3) Respectability

Dooms: Minimal (1) Devil’s Craft, Limited (2) Fae’s Trickery

Pools: HP 8, GP 7, SP 9, BP 3, FP 3

But we’re not done yet! We still need to create two Friends, one Rival, and one Enemy to make Klaus’ life interesting.

For his first Friend, I’ll choose the Stereotype of Alpha, the DIscord of The Ball and Chain, and the Problem of Web of Lies. That gives us a bunch of Ability adjustments to pile together, and we end up with a character who isn’t entirely un-rugged but whose only real stand-out Ability is his Basic (4) Schmoozing. He’s also got the sole Value of Utilitarianism, so apparently he’s a person of flexible morality. I’ll name him Fridolf Chickenhawke and write him up like this:

KLAUS’ FRIEND #1: FRIDOLF CHICKENHAWKE

Fridolf and Klaus first met in military school, where good-natured Fridolf took the timid kid under his wing and resolved to “show him how it’s done” – though what he mostly showed him was how to get in trouble with the teachers by creative but inevitably failed get-out-of-working-hard schemes. He has since settled down slightly and married a woman named Selma, to whom he’s trying to present a respectable front, though his happy-go-lucky nature is hard to repress. He has taken to blaming Klaus for things like staying out drinking too late or missing work, which hasn’t exactly made Klaus popular with formidable Selma.


Stereotype: Alpha
Problem: Web of Lies
Discord: The Ball and Chain

Values: Utilitarianism

Primary Abilities: Limited (3) Asskicking, Limited (3) Camping, Limited (3) Dramatics, Limited (2) Fitness, Minimal (1) Grit, Minimal (1) Hiding, Limited (3) Keenness, Limited (3) Mindgames, Minimal (1) Nerdery, Limited (2) Paperpushing, Basic (4) Schmoozing, Minimal (1) Weirdness

Derived Abilities: Limited (3) Bullshitting, Minimal (1) E-Skills, Limited (2) Hocuspocus, Minimal (1) Intrusion, Minimal (1) Joyriding, Limited (2) Lawyering, Limited (2) Quackery, Limited (2) Rumours, Limited (2) Trickery, Limited (3) Understanding, Limited (2) Volume, Limited (2) X-Tremeness

Special Abilities: Basic (5) Respectability

Pools: HP 7, GP 1, SP 3, BP 5

You’ll notice that Fridolf’s Pools are lower than Klaus’ is. That’s because he’s a GMC, and GMCs are assumed to be running around spending points from their Pools when the players aren’t looking.

For Klaus’ second Friend, I’m choosing the Stereotype of Optimist, the Problem of Pie in the Sky, and the Discord of High-Maintainance. Adding together all the modifiers from that, we get a jack of all trades who knows a little of everything but isn’t startlingly good at anything. They also have the Values of Harmony and Innovation, befitting someone who is sure that the world loves them and that good things are just one more fine adjustment away. I’ll write them up like this:

KLAUS’ FRIEND #2: SHIRLEY SHINE

Shirley works in the same office as Klaus, but is sure that that’s just a gateway to bigger and better things. She tinkers with mechanical inventions in her spare time and always has some new questionable contraption that she’s sure will sell big if she can just convince some bigwig to invest in it. She likes Klaus but considers all his interests to be insufferably boring (which, to be fair, isn’t inaccurate) and keeps trying to drag him off to do something more exciting, like helping her get rich.

Stereotype: Optimist
Problem: Pie in the Sky
Discord: High-Maintenance

Values: Harmony, Innovation

Primary Abilities: Minimal (1) Asskicking, Minimal (1) Camping, Limited (2) Dramatics, Limited (3) Fitness, Limited (3) Grit, Minimal (1) Hiding, Minimal (1) Keenness, Limited (3) Mindgames, Limited (3) Nerdery, Limited (3) Paperpushing, Limited (3) Schmoozing, Limited (3) Weirdness

Derived Abilities: Limited (3) Bullshitting, Limited (3) E-Skills, Limited (2) Hocuspocus, Limited (2) Intrusion, Limited (3) Joyriding, Limited (2) Lawyering, Limited (2) Quackery, Limited (3) Rumours, Limited (2) Trickery, Limited (2) Understanding, Limited (2) Volume, Limited (2) X-Tremeness

Special Abilities: Limited (3) Respectability

Pools: HP 7, GP 2, SP 4, BP 3

Next up is Klaus’ rival, his sitcom-style arch-nemesis who engages in pointless and belligerent feuds with him. I’ll pick the Approach of Brute, and the Redemption of Bravery, but just to shake things up (and preserve the alliteration) I’ll use the Feud of Brainy. So Klaus’ Rival is someone who wants to beat him up to prove that he’s smarter, and who clearly isn’t deterred by how little sense that makes! The points from those three choices gives me someone who is actually quite good at both Asskicking and Nerdery, and whose Values are Excellence and Innovation. Thus, I give you:

KLAUS’ RIVAL: HECTOR JIBB

Hector is an insecure overachiever who can’t stand not being the best at anything that he thinks matters, whether academic or athletic. He’s been out to get Klaus ever since he happened to score a single point more than Hector on their second grade spelling test, and is now constantly trying to show him up in front of the Court as a lesser intellect and an inferior sportsman, and never mind that Klaus has never claimed to be any sort of intellect or sportsman. Hector loves a challenge and throws himself into any chance to prove himself against impossible odds.

Approach: Brute
Feud: Brainy
Redemption: Bravery

Breed: Klutz

Values: Excellence, Innovation

Primary Abilities: Basic (6) Asskicking, Minimal (1) Camping, Minimal (1) Dramatics, Basic (5) Fitness, Limited (2) Grit, Minimal (1) Hiding, Minimal (1) Keenness, Minimal (1) Mindgames, Basic (5) Nerdery, Minimal (1) Paperpushing, Minimal (1) Schmoozing, Limited (2) Weirdness

Derived Abilities: Minimal (1) Bullshitting, Limited (3) E-Skills, Minimal (1) Hocuspocus, Limited (3) Intrusion, Basic (5) Joyriding, Minimal (1) Lawyering, Limited (3) Quackery, Minimal (1) Rumours, Minimal (1) Trickery, Minimal (1) Understanding, Limited (3) Volume, Basic (5) X-Tremeness

Special Abilities: Limited (3) Maze, Limited (3) Monstrosity, Limited (3) Pretension, Limited (3) Respectability

Dooms: Minimal (1) Ancient’s Wisdom, Minimal (1) Pariah’s Isolation, Minimal (1) Titan’s Prowess

Pools: HP 10, GP 1, SP 6, BP 3, FP 3

I made Hector a Klutz, since that fits well with his “a healthy mind in a healthy body” ethos. The Rival is usually another Monster, though that isn’t an absolute rule and I may well shake things up as I get further.

Finally, we need to create an Enemy. Those are more serious than Rivals – they might not be trying to kill you, per se, but they certainly want to ruin you and won’t be satisfied with less. They are also defined by their PC in a whole different way – their Abilities are generated by switching the Scores of certain of the PC’s Abilities that are in some way “opposites.”

Thus, to create Klaus’ Enemy, we switch his Limited (2) Asskicking and his Minimal (1) Schmoozing, giving the Enemy Minimal (1) Asskicking and Limited (2) Schmoozing. They’re neither one very impressive at either talking or fighting, but where Klaus is a little better at defending himself, the Enemy is a little better at talking his way out of trouble. We likewise exchange Klaus’ Minimal (1) Camping and his Limited (3) Paperpushing to give the Enemy Limited (3) Camping and Minimal (1) Paperpushing – Klaus is more at home in civilisation, and the Enemy is more at home in the wilderness, though again it’s neither’s defining feature.

A more serious difference is Dramatics and Hiding; Klaus’ Basic (5) Hiding and Minimal (1) Dramatics becomes a Basic (4) Dramatics and Minimal (1) Hiding for the Enemy – Klaus is very quiet, and the Enemy is very loud. Note that one point disappeared from that Basic (5). That’s because it came from Klaus’ Breed bonus, meaning it doesn’t “count” for these purposes.

And so on. The Enemy’s Values, meanwhile, are the polar opposites of Klaus’ Harmony and Community, meaning that they are Stoicism and Individualism.

We’ll have the Enemy be a Slayer, though figuring out their Legend took some thought. In the end, though, I decided that the Enemy was a brash, direct person who was secretly afraid (and envious) of anyone subtler and more circumspect than himself, and made him a Wimp, the Legend who aspires to be tricksters and rogues. I ended up writing him up like this:

KLAUS’ ENEMY: BARRY HUSSEL

Barry is a go-getter of the first order and has gotten a decent amount of financial success by working hard, running his own race, and shouting very loudly at people. However, no matter what he does, it never seems to be enough – really making it into the big time always seems to elude him. After being Called as a Slayer, he’s realised that the reason for that is that sinister beings like Klaus keep scurrying around in the shadows and ruining everything for him with their clever schemes. Well, Barry is going to show that he can out-scheme the lot of them, and then he’ll finally get the unrivalled fame and fortune that he deserves!

Legend: Wimp

Values: Stoicism, Individualism

Primary Abilities: Minimal (1) Asskicking, Limited (3) Camping, Basic (4) Dramatics, Limited (2) Fitness, Miniaml (1) Grit, Minimal (1) Hiding, Basic (4) Keenness, Minimal (1) Mindgames, Limited (3) Nerdery, Minimal (1) Paperpushing, Limited (2) Schmoozing, Limited (3) Weirdness

Derived Abilities: Minimal (1) Bullshitting, Limited (2) E-Skills, Limited (3) Hocuspocus, Limited (2) Intrusion, Limited (2) Joyriding, Limited (2) Lawyering, Limited (3) Quackery, Minimal (1) Rumours, Limited (2) Trickery, Limited (2) Understanding, Limited (3) Volume, Minimal (1) X-Tremeness

Special Abilities: Minimal (1) Calling, Advanced (8) Respectability

Pools: HP 6, GP 1, SP 3, BP 8

There you go! One PC with a supporting cast of four GMCs ready to go! Klaus will have his work cut out for him trying to beaten up by Hector, pulled into one of Barry’s inept schemes, press-ganged into trying to promote Shlley’s latest invention or getting blamed for whatever Selma is mad at Fridolf over this week.

Next up the Hoarder, our resident would-be marauding Dragon. Stay tuned.

The not-so-secret origins of Dragonbane

This week, I’ve somehow ended up messing around with some nostalgia. I did say I was going to occupy myself with something that wasn’t actively painful, though this wasn’t quite what I had in mind…

So, let’s go back to even before the sanctimonious edginess of the late 90s. It’s 1982. For the past eight years, Dungeons & Dragons has been doing the Lord’s work in socialising mildly autistic teenage boys. Not only does it dominate the field, but it very nearly is the field; a thousand flowers have yet to bloom. The World of Darkness is not even a twinkle in Mark Rein-Hagen’s eye. Kevin Siembieda has yet to decide that the problem with D&D is that it’s too restrained and thematically coherent and create Rifts to fix it. MIke Pondsmith won’t be replacing wizards and dragons for hackers and evil corporations in Cyberpunk for quite a few years yet, and of course that means that it’ll be even longer before someone decides, “hey, what if we had wizards and dragons and hackers and evil corporations?” and Shadowrun is born.

Still, there are always people who look at the trailblazer and go, “hmm, pretty cool, but I think I could do it better.” RuneQuest appeared a few years ago, and it’s already spawned regular runners-up Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu. And in Sweden, a bunch of cheerful amateurs whose experience is entirely with making board games realise that there are tons of mildly autistic Swedish boys who’d probably go gaga for roleplaying games if they weren’t written in a foreign language. So they license the RuneQuest rule system, and they release… this.

Drakar & Demoner (“Dragons & Demons”; these days known as Dragonbane in its English translation, presumably to make it less confusing) has arrived. Swedish dorkdom will never be the same.

The rulebook is a slender little 54-page booklet, including the sample adventure Among Goblins and Trolls. Precisely how much of it is original is something I’m still not clear on, but apparently a big chunk of it is just a (decidedly shaky) translation of RuneQuest’s more generic version, Basic Roleplaying. Well, keeping in mind that I’m not sure who to credit, I’ll just tell you my impressions.

The start is quite charming, being a short description of how an unassuming farmhand makes a journey to a nearby village, hears some interesting rumours of haunted ruins and the like, and faces a few limited difficulties, with the narration frequently discussing the different ways they might deal with them. It’s nice and flavourful, giving a sense of low-key, whimsical setting that evokes the peaceful Swedish countryside. It’s also kind of completely different from anything you’ll encounter in the game, giving the impression that the whole thing is more of a pastoral slice-of-life affair than a gritty dungeon-crawler. Oh well.

The rules are… quite decent, as far as they go, but they’re presented in a jumble that takes some time to figure out. The system is d100 roll-under, and you get a base chance in most everyday skill (climbing, sneaking, listening, etc) in about the 40% to 60% range. Anything racier than that, like weapons, tend to start at 20% or less, with clubs having the highest base chances, axes somewhat lower, and swords pretty much hopeless to hit with without training. You also roll 3d6 for seven different core stats, which decide your hit points, your carrying capacity, your spell points, and your percentage chance at a bunch of non-skill abilities like dodging and persuasion.

You may attempt to roll to start the game as a Warrior, a Magician or a Scholar, with the first being relatively easy (the percentage chance is the sum of all your stats) and the latter two being a bit trickier. If you can’t make the roll for any of them, or you choose not to make it, you can start as an Outlaw instead.

Warriors start with a horse, armour, and a couple of different weapons, and they get skill with those weapons as well as riding and jumping (for… some reason?). Outlaws start with a shortsword and dagger and skill in those and in a whole bunch of non-combat-related skills, including pickpocketing and lockpicking. They both also get a comfortable amount of starting cash, having looted or stolen it, respectively.

Scholars start with a decent chance at knowing stuff in one particular academic area, a poor chance of knowing something in any other academic area, and one close combat weapon. I would strongly advise against playing one of these, having the power of Knowing Stuff is fun in theory, but in practice, you’re just not going to get much mileage out of being well-versed in Astronomy when dungeon-crawling. At most, I could see a scholar working as a poor man’s healer, since they get first aid skills, but only in a party that didn’t have a magician with a healing spell.

Magicians start with a weapon of their choice and four spells at somewhat unimpressive success chances. The spells can be pretty cool, though, if not earth-shaking – turning invisible, seeing into the past, and lifting small objects with your mind are all possibilities with a lot of utility, and of course you can take the healing spell, which is a game changer in this game given how slow hit point recovery is and how scarce healing potions are (they can be store-bought, a fact that is hidden at the end of a paragraph somewhere in the gear section, but they cost a freaking fortune, so unless the GM is kind enough to leave plenty for you to find, you won’t be able to rely on them).

The book mentions that magic is divided into “ceremonial magic” and “sorcery,” with the latter being the sort of quick-casting spells that adventurers have access to, and the former being the explanation for magical items, potions, demons, undead hordes, and other stuff that adventurers will run into a lot. It takes ages to use and requires extensive training – ceremonial magicians might have been adventurers at one point, but they’ve since retired to pursue their studies. Okay, that’s a nice touch that I wish had made it into later editions, it answer the question of, “but why can’t I do all that stuff that the NPCs can apparently do?” pretty satisfactorily.

Notably, you don’t necessarily have to be a magician to learn spells, it’s just a lot easier that way. Again, something that I feel is quite charming and that unfortunately didn’t last – as the editions went on, the gatekeeping around magic just got more and more determined, I am sorry to say.

Spells can be cast in levels of effect, but everything over the first level imposes a cumulative -10% penalty to your chance to get it off. Which, given that you start out at 45% if you’re lucky and will pretty much never get as high as 100%, would seem to ensure that you’ll always be casting at near level one, but that doesn’t stop the text from slapping on a lot of restrictions to how high a degree you can use as if that is ever going to be a problem. Yeah, I don’t know, really. Oh, and you have to spend as many spell points as the levels of the spell, even if you fail the casting, so you’ll get winded pretty fast if you try to spam a low-probability casting.

Magic items exist. If you have one, and you know how to trigger it (there is a spell that lets you discern how to trigger a particular object, and you can hire an NPC magician to cast it for you if you can’t pull it off yourself), you get a chance to cast the spell at 5 x your Power stat, at whatever level the item is set for. There are also demonic items which have minds of their own and can cast one or more spells for you if you manage to bend them to your will, but if you botch with it the demon breaks loose. Oooooh, pretty cool. I’m guessing that’s probably taken from Stormbringer,

Combat! Everyone go in strict order of their Skill stat (renamed “Dexterity” in later editions). You can attack or parry once per round, and you have to decide whether to parry before an opponent’s attack is resolved, so if you’re fighting someone with higher Skill than you and not carrying a shield, you’re at a definite disadvantage – you can’t just wait for him to miss so you can take a swing of your own, you have to bet on him missing or accept some damage every time. All of which of course means that heavy armour is king – if you’re a knight in full plate, you scoff at most regular weapons and can swing your claymore around without even bothering to parry. The second best thing is to have a shield, because then you can parry with that and attack with your weapon in the same round.

Parrying an attack from a slashing (like an axe) or bashing (like a club) weapon damages the parrying weapon, and so does failing an attack against an opponent who succeeds at a parry with a slashing or bashing weapon – as in, these things have a shockingly low survival rate and you shouldn’t get too used to them. Parrying with a shield doesn’t damage it, but instead of flat out deflecting the attack, it “only” subtracts a lot of damage from it.

Impaling weapons (like spears) have a low chance (like, one to five percent) of doing a ton of extra damage, though if they do they become stuck in the enemy and have to be yanked out. Heh, that’s kind of cool, and offers at least some limited hope of poking through a knight’s armour when all you have is a dagger or something. I kind of feel like there should be some mention of the effects of fighting with a spear sticking out of you, mind…

Hit points are limited, and will rarely if ever get higher no matter how experienced you get – a couple of hits with a regular sword will kill you. Recovery is slow, you’ll be laid up for months. Wear armour! More is better! None of that Errol Flynn crap, we’re being gritty and medieval here. And again, try very hard to have a magician with the healing spell in the party so you don’t have to go on extended sick leaves after every adventure.

There is a limited monster manual consisting of two semi-benevolent humanoids (elves and dwarves), two semi-malevolent humanoids (trolls and goblins), two undead (skeletons and ghosts), two monsters (manticores and chimeras), two regular animals (horses and wolves) and, to justify the titles, dragons and demons. Both of the latter two, by the way, are way way way too tough for you to ever want to fight them with these super-gritty rules.

The humanoid races are all playable, and there are hasty additions that explain what chances that makes to the character creation process. Elves are cheaty bastards who start with a bunch of spells without needing to be magicians. Trolls are likewise kind of overpowered, and are not stupid brutes but actually have better long-term memory than other races, but they make up for it by being unable to stand sunlight.

Then, finally, there is the starting adventure which is stated to be for the use of 3-6 starting-level characters. Absolutely no experienced parties, it fussily admonishes you, or it won’t be challenging enough! Well, I rolled up a couple of characters and made a solo game of it, and…

DEAR FREAKING LORD.

This thing is impossible! My party didn’t even make it past the first room before they got zapped unconscious by a couple of flying jellyfish with four insta-knockout attacks per round! I decided to try to roll with it and have them wake up in a cell and have to free themselves, so they did that, but then they got TPK:ed by a single templar who was wearing full armour (meaning he was all but invincible) had more hit points than anything human should be able to have by the rules, and did a crapload of damage with his attack which had a 85% success chance. And there are six of those things running around the dungeon!

Did… did no one playtest this? Am I just missing something obvious here? I couldn’t even figure out any way to finesse it – like, those jellyfish have crazy-high initiative, fly faster than a human can run, and have a 100% success rate at sneaking. Along with, again, four or five attacks per round that, no matter how carefully I try to read the rules, seem to paralyse anyone it hits regardless of his stats or armour, so even if you had super-experienced characters with hit chances of 120%, they’d probably still get creamed, because there are just no reasonable countermeasures to these things.

Yeah, I had to give up on this one. It’s a shame, because I actually kind of liked the ambience. I mean, the jellyfish are OP, but… giant demonic jellyfish! Plus fire-breathing demon wolves, black knights, and a creepy living wall that is the physical manifestation of an evil god. It looks like it’d be great fun if it was actually playable…

Well… that’s the very first Dragonbane book. I admit myself to being kind of fond of it, for all its shaky bits. There were a lot of ideas being thrown against the wall here, a lot of which didn’t make it into the second edition, and a lot of blank spaces that later editions went rather too hard at filling out (the currently extant edition of Dragonbane has, for the most parts, dialed back on the complexity to the point where it is if anything simpler than the original one). It’s crude, but it’s pretty usable, and it actually looks like it would be fun.

Alas, I never got to try it. In 1982, I was still occupied with mastering potty training, and by the time I got old enough to discover the awesomeness of roleplaying, the fourth edition was in full swing. And the mental scars I have from that should probably be the subject of its own post…

Aberrant readthrough: postscript

So, some three months ago I got it into my head that I was going to tackle Aberrant as my next porting project, and since then, I have been manfully working my way through the 16-book first edition. My original estimate was that it started pretty bad, but got slightly better. Then I found that after it got slightly better, it got a whole lot worse.

So does that mean I’m giving up on porting it? NEVER!!! I will hammer this stupid thing into something playable, just you watch me. It just might take me, er… a little longer than anticipated.

Still, let’s start with sketching out a few things that need to be emphasised, de-emphasised, or completely changed to make use of the potential that is actually there.

NERF ALL THE UBER-NPCS

This is a great idea for any White Wolf game, frankly, DIvis Mal, Caestus Pax, Antaeus, and all the other monstrosities need to be brought down to a level where they can at least be affected by things that the PCs do. Essentially, everything that calls for Quantum 6+ needs to be cut.

This is not to say that some NPCs shouldn’t be a lot more powerful than starting PCs. Divis Mal really is the world’s most powerful nova. He’s just not an untouchable god. And he really can whup Caestus Pax’s butt, which is something that should make everyone not 100% aligned with his values very concerned, he just has to break a sweat doing it and will have a few bruises of his own by the end. No unstoppable forces, no immovable objects.

And while I’m at the subject:

NO MORE KISSING OF DIVIS MAL’S ASS

No matter how perfectly toned it no doubt is! Divis Mal doesn’t get to be 100% right and perfect, because no one gets to be 100% right and perfect. He needs to be presented as a larger-than-life character with larger-than-life flaws. Specifically, his assumption that novas will naturally gravitate to agreeing with him about everything (except for maybe a few details to spice up the late-night philosophical discussions, ho ho) is going to be founded on nothing but his egomania. Mal feels lonely, and he assumes it’s because no one is as smart and powerful as him, because he’s the kind of narcissist who naturally assumes that. The real reason he’s lonely is because he is unable to accept that someone might disagree with him without being an idiot.

So no, Novas don’t evolve into a One Race of enlightened beings who will leave those filthy, filthy baselines behind to create a better, brighter, and more fabulous world. They evolve into a thousand different single-individual species, each one exaggerated into a caricature of his or her original biases and values. Mal hasn’t created companions for himself. He’s just created thousands of beings who will all be both as supremely powerful and as emotionally isolated as himself.

And guess what? That’s not going to end well for anyone.

NO MORE STUPID STERILISATION PLOT

Because it’s dumb. It makes no sense in or out of universe.

But fine, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let’s just say that eruption naturally causes fertility problems, precisely because it does start revamping your entire biology to better suit your idea of how it’s meant to work. Again, a nova is essentially a species of one – and the definition of a species is something that can’t reproduce with another species. That’s why everyone is hot and single, not because of some nefarious plot.

Then let’s add the qualification that there are ways to allow novas to breed, but it takes either special medical procedures (that must be unique for each nova) or rare quantum powers. That’s in keeping with the setting, where those are ways that Utopia’s stupid sterility plague can be cured, but it turns nova infertility into a realistic-feeling consequence of personal evolution, not some skeevy conspiracy. We can even make it so that Utopia is supposed to be working on a cure but are notoriously dragging their feet about it and designating some of the more promising procedures as “black-tech” since they’re secretly worried that it might lead to a nova population explosion that might just rip the world asunder.

Still a little too lurid and demoralising for my taste, but fine – we’re looking to make the least active changes to the setting here.

UTOPIA’S FAILINGS NEED TO BE MORE REALISTIC

Having gotten rid of the sterility plague, we need to come up with some better shady elements of Project Utopia. And the books actually do fumble in the direction of some on occasion, they just invariably fall back on inept Proteus schemes.

So: Utopia really is trying to fix the world’s problems. The problem is, the world’s problems are complicated, and fixing one tends to either worsen another or create a brand new one. Brilliant experimental fixes for the environment turn out to have long-term consequences that no one foresaw. Ending poverty requires erasing local culture. Vigorous crime-fighting tramples all over the civil liberties of innocent people caught in the drag net. Not everyone agrees with Project Utopia’s solutions, because those solutions have actual downsides to them.

Enter Project Proteus. Their job is to cover up all that nasty moral ambiguity and create the illusion that this is a bright, shiny superhero setting where the caped supermen are completely trustworthy and absolutely capable of fixing everything with a smile and a wink. Anyone complains? Discredit them. Anyone refuses to cooperate? Blackmail them. A T2M-er marketed as a wholesome role model gets drunk and makes an ass of himself? Bribe everyone into staying quiet about it.

If someone starts to notice too many things they’re not supposed to and can’t be gently deterred, then of course more drastic measures need to be taken. Sometimes people really do disappear into black sites or have unfortunate accidents. The really dark stuff is still there, it’s just there at the end of a long trail of logic that starts with precisely the kind of brand-management and message-polishing that’s considered just common sense for anyone in the business.

Divis Mal is sure that he’s right, and that the only reason people disagree with him is because they’re stupid – so he tries to make them smarter. Project Utopia is sure that it’s right, and that the only reason people disagree with it is that they’re stupid – so it tries to present them with a simpler, brighter picture that no one could possibly disagree with. Neither of them ever considers the possibility that people might disagree with them because they’re wrong. They’re each other’s reflection, and between the two of them they’ll wreck the world by trying to fix it.

PUT TAINT FRONT AND CENTRE

Taint should be the main event. It’s what makes the setting fundamentally unstable – and thus dynamic and interesting. Taint is, if not the only reason why Project Utopia can’t create a real-world Justice League of moral paragons, then at least one major reason. By the time someone has the power of Superman, he no longer has the inclination to be Superman, insofar as he ever had it. Why protect a human race that you can no longer relate to, either physically or mentally or both? It’s not that Taint turns you evil, necessarily. It’s that it makes you something other than human – and it’s hard to empathise with anything that is too different from yourself.

Taint is also the reason why Divis Mal’s plan for the One Race is doomed. Again, he assumes that there is only a single line of evolution leading away from humanity, and that it leads to become something very much like him, since he is clearly perfection incarnate! In fact, every nova’s Taint will send him or her off in a different direction – each one an infinitely long branch of an increasingly bizarre and disjointed tree.

And of course, sometimes a nova’s initial self-image is so warped that Taint really does turn them evil, because “evil” is the only way to describe the thing they most long to be. The Church of Astaroth should function as a sobering example, not a contemptible strawman. What happens when someone gets offered the chance to become whatever he want to be, and what he thinks he wants to be is cartoonishly evil? Then cartoonish evil becomes a real thing, and that’s not silly or pathetic. It’s terrifying.

THE DIRECTIVE NEEDS SOMETHING TO DO

The Directive may just be the most underserved part of the setting, to the point where I’m not exactly sure why the writers even put it in there, since they were so uninterested in doing anything with it. It’s presented as a cynical, scheming organisation of manipulators and secret agents, but there already is one of those, it’s called Project Proteus. The Directive can’t be the paranoia-inducing hidden hand behind the scenes, because Project Proteus already fills that role with more gusto.

But fine – it’s there. And it needs something to do. I think that something should be this:

The Directive is there to oppose attempts to change the world.

Changing the world is meant to be a thing you can do in Aberrant, but since that’s so hard to turn into something gameable, it’s a theme that’s mostly paid lip service to. You want to revitalise the economy of the Philippines? Okay, then we can either have you make a single roll to see if you succeed at that lengthy project, or we can play out a long, boring series of meetings and late-night policy-writing sessions. Either way, it sounds kind of boring.

So let the Directive stand in for the inertia of the setting. You want to revitalise the economy? Sure, you can do that, because gosh-darn-it, you’re a nova, you can do anything! But the Directive doesn’t want you to do it. It probably has some kind of reasons – it’ll disrupt things elsewhere, it’ll empower radical elements, or maybe the crooks who benefit from the Philippines being underdeveloped offered them something they want. Either way, this thing you want to do? The Directive doesn’t want it done.

So now we an antagonist with some agency, not just boring procedures. Now you’ll have to fight off attacks by high-tech assassins. Figure out who’s blackmailing people into dropping their support for your plans. Prevent attempts at sabotaging your infrastructure. You know. Roleplaying stuff.

And of course, sometimes the Directive will be right. Sometimes the thing you’re doing really is going to have nasty consequences that you’re blithely ignoring – just like Project Utopia is prone to.

All right. That’ll do for a start. We still haven’t gotten into the actual rules aspect yet, but first I have to figure out how to actually run the game. But I think I can do this. I thiiiiink I can do this.

Aberrant readthrough: Player’s Guide and Underworld

Aha! Ahahahaha! I did it! I read the whole stupid thing! Half of it I didn’t particularly like and the other half I outright loathed, but I got through it all and now I can despise it while fully informed!

… sometimes I think the Internet has just broken me.

Anyway, here’s the last stretch. First off we have the Player’s Guide, which is usually the title in any game line where they cram in anything and everything they couldn’t find a place for anywhere else. Let’s see if there are some nuggets in there.

We start off badly with the infamous This Is Not The Superfriends essay, where we are berated for being so unimaginative as to play superheroes. Why, if we would only open our minds a little, we could play far more interesting things like… er… hmm… a teleporting courier of some sort! Or a mentally disabled pro wrestler! Don’t you see, the possibilities are endless! But suuuure, you can play a game where you wear tights and have code names and punch villains, if that’s really the level you want to stay on. Like, if you’re a complete philistine you could do that, yes.

Uh-huh. Here’s the problem with that. Well, there are many problems with that, but here’s the main problem with that. The game doesn’t offer any sort of support at all for playing one of those “more creative, more realistic” character types. And I know this for a fact, because I have read through the whole stupid thing so I can have an informed opinion! In the game that is delivered over sixteen books, of which this one is the fifteenth, most character you encounter wear tights. And have code names. And punch, if not villains, then at least people they don’t like. The situations you’re set up to encounter tend to involve international intrigue and looming large-scale disaster, not navel-gazing reveries of how it would really feel to have superpowers, you know, really, I mean really.

And there is a very good reason for that, which is that it’s hard to even imagine what a game about navel-gazing reveries would even look like or how you’d play it. Immersion is all very well, and there should certainly be more to most games than just rolling to hit, but you also need some kind of tangible conflict to interact with. And that was something White Wolf always seemed to acknowledge only reluctantly and with the greatest distaste, because ew, dice-rolling, how uncultured.

Okay, I’m five pages in and already I’m ranting, I’d better move along…

Immediately after the section about how shallow and boring you are for wanting to play a character with a code name… we get a long worldbuilding section about how novas choose their code names. Because this game is immune to irony. Okay, so I understand it’s really because the different chapters were written by different people who didn’t communicate very well, but still, you couldn’t have created a better example of tonal mismatch if you’d tried to…

And following that is a long worldbuilding section about novas acting as vigilantes. Are we sure they weren’t intentionally parodying themselves at this point?

There’s a semi-useful part about how you rise in the ranks as part of different factions, and what Backgrounds you might gain to symbolise your new assets. There’s also a rundown of each Background, later on, that provides a bit more guidance for how it might actually be used. That’s cool. Also, someone realised that the Eufibre Background (which gives you… a spandex suit that won’t get shredded by your powers) was underwhelming, so now there’s also the option to use it to make your suit change shape, have it send out tentacles or form wings and just generally do the whole Venom-symbiote thing. That’s even cooler.

There’s a section of rules for going into space. Which is nice, I guess, very superhero-y… but it’d be even nicer if there was actually anything out there to get excited over. I mean, I’m pretty sure sentient alien life exists in the Aberrant universe, but apparently we’re not going to be using that until Trinity?

The OpNet gets a bit more description and it’s even more hilariously obvious that it’s basically the Internet of today. Like, credit where it’s due, they anticipated a lot of upcoming possibilities and annoyances at a time when dial-up modems were still state of the art. We also get stats for a pair of nova documentary-makers. Okay, I guess that might be useful at some point…

Novas used to exist before N-Day! They were weaker, but they were around, and people only don’t know that because Project Proteus has shushed it up (for… some reason?). So you can play a historical Aberrant game if you want to use these piece-of-crap rules without the piece-of-crap setting. Whatever.

We finally get a look behind the curtain of the Aeon Society (I may not have mentioned them. They’re the vaguely benevolent secret conspiracy of rich people who founded and run Project Utopia), and some general setting information about just what quantum powers actually are. In addition to novas, there is also something called psiads who don’t control quantum energies but “noetic energies,” which are basically magic, as if quantum powers weren’t… Anyway, psiads are weaker than novas and have subtler powers, but they don’t suffer Taint, so that’s nice. The Aeon Society knows about psiads and are discreetly researching them.

There’s also a third kind of super called paramorphs, but you can’t play one of those. There’s only one in existence and he’s super-cool and wonderful and godlike and DEAR LORD, I’m so glad that the game ended before we got to see more of that guy because I’d have ended up hating him more than Divis Mal. He also effectively runs the Aeon Society and thus in extension Project Utopia, but he’s totally not responsible for anything bad Project Utopia does because he’s just too noble to use brute, authoritarian force to get them to stop vivisecting people. Arrrgggghhhhh.

There are new nova powers. They are boring. You know, that bears repeating. The powers in this White Wolf game… are boring. That would be White Wolf, famous for being terrible at power mechanics but great at power flavour. You read a game like Exalted and go over the Charm lists, and you keep going, “oooooh, that’s cool. It’s absolutely, completely useless and I’d be screwing myself over by taking it instead of something that just gave me a flat dice bonus, but it sure is cool.” This game fails at the thing that the writers built their brand on being good at. Let that sink in.

There are overpowered powers that the players are never, ever, in a million years going to be able to buy and that are just there to justify the abilities of uber-NPCs. They are boring too.

There are rules for creating artificial superpower-gizmos like freeze rays and jet packs and stuff. They are delivered with a lot of sniffing and sneering and “well, if you must have them, here they are.” Yeah, you really hate the idea that power might come from something other than inherent speshulness, don’t you?

The book wraps with some “nova affiliations” (superteams. They’re superteams). That’s a thing I have actually asked for, so that’s nice. Nippontai finally gets outlined, and so does a Scandinavian team (except the writers seem to think that the Netherlands are part of Scandinavia…), an Australian team, a doomsday prepper team living in Antarctica (first mentioned back in The Directive, finally described here), a psychic team (that includes some psiads who don’t realise they’re psiads and not novas), an ecoterrorist team (who kill and torture people, and which the writers clearly meant for the players to be able to join. Yeah…), a team that explores space, and a gay team (I haven’t said anything about the game’s strident LGBT activism and I’m not going to start now, but… yeah, that was a cause the writers were clearly very passionate about). Well, that helps, actually I’d kind of have liked to see a similar writeup of the four Team Tomorrow groups, since they’re supposed to be the most high-profile group in existence, but, well…

What we do get is a membership roster of… Teen Tomorrow (ugh. Too cute), the teen superhero team. Which is such a terrible idea in a “realistic” setting that even Caestus Pax, authoritarian strawman that he is, is against it, but here they are anyway. And they have a Teragen counterpoint called the Kabal. Ugh.

Well, that wraps it up. Then all that remains is:

You know those crime syndicates that have hung around in the background for the entire game line? The ones that seem custom-made to provide antagonists but that are so vaguely defined as to give you nothing to work with? Well, here we finally get a closer look at them, and it turns out that they… do criminal-syndicate stuff.

Well, that was sure worth waiting fifteen books for!

Sigh. To be a little more specific, when Project Utopia ended crime as one of its opening moves (which it apparently did by loopholing the use of super-senses and mindreading as not counting as illegal surveillance and therefore being admissible in court, in a move that should definitely have gotten every halfway-sincere human rights activist up in arms but was apparently accepted by any but a few malcontents because “everyone was tired of seeing the mobsters get away with stuff”… I hate this game so much), the crooks who were smart and ruthless enough to not get caught banded together into four super-syndicates that now rule the underworld. Which is… convenient for ease of use, if nothing else; you don’t have to read up on the particulars of Mexican drug cartels when there’s just one big organisation that does all the drug-smuggling from Latin America.

There’s the Camparelli-Zhokov Mega-Syndicate. They’re the Sicilian mafia that’s teamed up with the Russian mafia so that we can have everything called “the mafia” under one umbrella, and never mind that they don’t actually have much to do with each other… There’s the Heaven Thunder Triads, who are Chinese and mystical and insidious and filthy and did I mention that this book has a sidebar berating you for indulging in ethnic stereotypes? There’s the Nakato Gumi, who are the yakuza and hyper-modern and also effectively allied with the Directorate (because the Nakato Gumi owns Kuro-Tek, which is a Japanese company that produces all sorts of interesting weapons that Utopia doesn’t want people to have). And there’s the Medellín Cartel, who are South American drug smugglers and also Nazis for some reason.

Naturally, the book does a lot of humming and hawing and trying to nudge you away from actually using its content. See, Project Utopia doesn’t actually want to fight crime (they want to attack the “root causes,” apparently), and the syndicates don’t actually have a lot of nova operatives for them to fight, so, you know, are you sure you wouldn’t rather play a mentally disabled pro wrestler? But fine, if you absolutely must, you can fight gangsters, or play gangsters, just as long as you keep in mind that it doesn’t actually matter to the setting in any way.

The book closes with a sample character. Who is… Spider-Man. Except a crook. So now we have that.

And that’s it, I’m done. I hope you enjoyed my increasingly deranged ranting, though I can’t really say the same. Next week, I might try to put together some kind of closing thoughts, and then I’ll see about writing about something I don’t actually hate. Now that’ll be a nice change of pace…

The Imperial weisenheimer

I still haven’t finished any of the remaining Aberrant books. I started on Underworld just to see if it was any easier than Player’s Guide, and it was, a little, but not enough to let me get through more than a third of it. I am so done with this game, I kid you not…

I have, on the other hand, started sketching out my next Dark Heresy port in a little more detail. I give you, The Adept! I think here I have come up with a reasonably workable way of presenting someone whose superpower is to know a lot of stuff without having to turn each one into a separate move, Corruption has also been personalised so that each Career moves towards a different tragic end, but in a way that hopefully feels cool and flavourful instead of being a chore.

We’ll see how the rest turn out – I’m sketching on The Arbitrator now.

THE ADEPT

Origins:

[ ] Forge World
The hyper-competitive environment fostered by the Tech-Priests taught you that academia is just another form of war. You can spend 1 Righteous Fury to get +1 forward to any Analytical roll.

[ ] Imperial World
As a scribe for the Administratum, you have a thorough understanding of the logistical underpinnings of the eternal war effort. You gain the Subject: War for your Common Lore move.

[ ] Schola Progenium
At the Schola, you were submitted to the rigours of a classical education. You gain the Subject: Philosophy for your Common Lore move.

Starting moves:

[X] Common Lore
Choose 1 Subject from the list below, and also gain Imperium as a Subject. When you encounter one of your Subjects (your decide), tell the GM which weighty tome you once read something related to the situation in, and in what way the author of said volume was biased, sloppy, or otherwise not entirely reliable. Then ask the GM a question pertaining to the Subject and situation. The GM tells you the answer insofar as you would reasonably know it, keeping in mind the flaws of your source.

  • Adeptus Arbites
  • Administratum
  • Astromancy
  • Bureaucracy
  • Chymistry
  • Ecclesiarchy
  • Imperial Creed
  • Heraldry
  • Legend
  • Machine Cult
  • Occult
  • Tech

[X] Researcher
When you can use a library to research a topic, you are considered to have access to every Subject the library covers for purposes of using the Common Lore move. However, searching a library takes a while – the GM decides exactly how much, but certainly more than the mere seconds to recall something you already know.

Basic moves:

[ ] Attentive
No detail, however insignificant, is beneath the notice of a true bureaucrat. Increase Intuitive by 1.

[ ] Brilliant
Your rational mind is honed to perfection. Increase Analytical with 1.

[ ] Common Lore: Well-Read
Requires Common Lore. Choose 2 additional Subjects for your Common Lore move.

[ ] Common Lore: Scholar
Requires Common Lore: Well-Read. Choose 2 additional Subjects for your Common Lore move.

[ ] Contempt for the Flesh
When you endure the effects of heat, cold or fatigue, roll +Disciplined instead of +Unyielding.

[ ] Delver Into Forbidden Lore
Requires Forbidden Lore. When you can use a library to research a topic, you are considered to have access to every Subject the library covers for purposes of using the Forbidden Lore move.

[ ] Forbidden Lore
Choose 1 Subject from the list below. When you ask a question about one of your Subjects, you gain 1 Corruption Point and the GM tells you what you might reasonably know. She then asks you what tale of horror you encountered this blasphemous fact in.

  • Cults
  • Heresy
  • Inquisition
  • Mutants

[ ] Gopher
When you fearlessly advance on the direct orders of a theoretical superior, roll +Disciplined instead of +Fierce.

[ ] Logical Extrapolation
When you assess the available facts, roll +Analytical. 10-14, you make an educated deduction about something interesting that has previously happened in this place,. 15+, the same, and the GM also tells you where and how you might try to learn more about it.

[ ] Medicae
When you provide medical care, roll +Analytical. 9-, you clean the injuries, but that’s all you can do without more expert help or more advanced facilities. 10-14, the patient immediately heals 1d5 Wounds. No further uses of this move is possible on the patient until they have either taken or healed at least 1 Wound. 15+, the same, but the patient heals 1d10 Wounds.

[ ] Mind Like a Fortress
Increase your Corruption Limit by 3.

[ ] The Men of the Mind
When you command their respect towards scribes, bureaucrats or scholars, roll +Analytical instead of +Charismatic.

[ ] Speak Language
When you hear a strange tongue for the first time, roll +Analytical. 9-, the language or dialect is unknown to you. 10-14, thanks to your studies, you can communicate a bit awkwardly in the language or dialect. 15+, you speak the language or dialect like you were born to it.

[ ] Stickler
You are a slave to proper procedure. Increase Disciplined by 1.

[ ] Unremarkable
When you stay beneath notice by mindlessly carrying out dreary, time-consuming tasks, roll +Disciplined. 7-9, clear an Exposure box, but without something to occupy your mind with, it strays to dangerous topics. Gain 1 Corruption Point. 10+, the same, but you fill your mind with nothing but servile piety and escape Corruption.

Advanced moves:

[ ] Armour of Contempt
When you roll to gain Corruption Points (NOT when you gain a fixed number of them), reduce the result by 2.

[ ] The Art of War
You line up a shot with the same care that you apply proper punctuation. Increase Precise by 1.

[ ] Common Lore: Walking Encyclopedia
Requires Common Lore: Scholar. Choose 2 additional Subjects for your Common Lore move.

[ ] Common Lore: Savantus Supremus
Requires Common Lore: Walking Encyclopedia. Choose 2 additional Subjects for your Common Lore move.

[ ] Cross-Disciplinary
Select an Advance from another Career.

[ ] Forbidden Lore: Dangerous Obsession
Requires Forbidden Lore: Unhealthy Interest. Choose 1 additional Subject for your Forbidden Lore move.

[ ] Forbidden Lore: Unhealthy Interest
Requires Forbidden Lore. Choose 1 additional Subject for your Forbidden Lore move.

[ ] Its Gates Locked and Barred
Requires Mind Like a Fortress. Increase your Corruption Limit by 3.

[ ] Lecturer
You have learned that people are more likely to listen to your rants if you make them interesting. Increase Charismatic by 1.

[ ] Master Chirurgeon
Requires Medicae. When you provide medical care, the patient heals 2 Wounds more than indicated.

[ ] Practical Application
Select an Advance from another Career.

[ ] Pragmatic
A rational person takes whatever path promises the greatest probability of success. Increase Treacherous by 1.

[ ] Scurrying Rat
Requires Gopher. When you circumvent a threat by staying out of sight and relying on little-used paths, roll +Analytical instead of +Treacherous.

[ ] Sound Constitution
Increase your Wound Limit by 3.

[ ] Total Recall
Requires Brilliant. You can perfectly memorise large swaths of information. You can always ask the GM for any detail of your past life experience, no matter how seemingly trivial or irrelevant at the time. If given a few moments, you can completely memorise maps, lists, documents, etc, and later examine them at your leisure from memory.

Corruption moves:

[ ] Blasphemous Insight. Your thoughts have escaped the safe confines of Imperial thought, proving you with flexibility of thought at the cost of growing corruption. When you apply your intellect, you may choose to take +1 forward to the roll at the cost of gaining 1 Corruption Point.

[ ] Powerful Secrets. Your study into esoteric knowledge has allowed you to kindle the natural psychic ability of all humans. Choose 2 Minor Psychic Powers from the Imperial Psyker’s list. You can activate them at the cost of gaining 1 Corruption Point per activation. When doing so, you must chant and gesture in a way that anyone even slightly knowledgeable will recognise as sorcerous.

[ ] Thirst for the Unholy. Every taste of the terrible truths of the world renews your will to go on even as it damns your soul. When you roll to gain Corruption Points (not when you gain a fixed amount of them), hold Righteous Fury.

[ ] You can no longer resist the temptation to use the secrets you have learned. You immediately attempt an ill-fated sorcerous invokation that gets out of control and rips open a hole into the Warp, into which you disappear screaming never to be seen again. Make a new character.

I have done actual stuff!

I didn’t manage to complete the Aberrant Player’s Guide this week – it’s long and it’s boring, and I’ve been distracted by more interesting things. See, it occurred to me that instead of reading PDFs of an outdated 90s game that I hate… I could read PDFs of outdated 90s games that I might actually like. I know, it’s a crazy idea, but what if I did something to not be miserable?

Still, my Aberrant readthrough will eventually be finished, if it so kills me – I have one and a half book left, surely I can do it. And while I’m at it, I also intend to finish that loathsome piece of smirking, YouTube-spawned zoomer dreck Daggerheartat some point. I refuse to be beaten by self-righteous hacks, be they 90s hipster edgelords or 20s woke snowflakes!

But, just for this week, I figured I’d actually post some work on my own projects for a bit. My attention span hasn’t been the greatest, but I’ve managed to put in some actual work on three different ones.

THE DARK HERESY PORT

My Dark Heresy port… works. That’s about the best you can say for it. It works, it’s not actively painful to use, it’s better (subjective statement, I know!) than the original rules. But it’s still not good. It’s over-complicated. It’s dense. It’s got lots of things that will never get used. It lacks the sort of punch that PbtA games should have, the sense of providing the flavour explicitly instead of trying to make it an emergent property of a hundred fiddly modifiers.

So this week, I started scribbling on a new version. I’m keeping a lot of things from the old, but I’m stripping the basic moves down to one per Characteristic. I’m also renaming the Characteristics to make them represent personal qualities more so than raw talent – for example, I’m renaming Strength to Fierce, and you roll +Fierce to push forward, to advance, to remove obstacles. Like so:

Weapon Skill – Lethal
Ballistic Skill – Precise
Strength – Fierce
Toughness – Unyielding
Agility – Treacherous
Perception – Intuitive
Willpower – Disciplined
Fellowship – Charismatic
Intelligence – Analytical

I’m also merging Insanity and Corruption together into a single pool of “mental hit points.” Keeping track of them both just seems pointless, because honestly, I can’t remember many places in the fiction where anyone went crazy without being implied to be in some way corrupted or under demonic influence. Also, each Career gets three pre-defined conditions that they hit the first, second and third time they exceed their maximum number of Corruption Points. So for instance, the Adept becomes increasingly obsessed with blasphemous lore and ends up summoning daemons, the Arbitrator becomes less and less able to compromise and ends up getting himself killed in a pointless last stand, the Tech-Priest’s bionics take over more and more until he’s a prisoner in a body now wholly run by cogitors… and so on.

Finally, I’m introducing two collective tracks: Exposure and Intel. Whenever the players make a mess, they mark Exposure, and once all the boxes are marked the enemy knows who they are and start seriously gunning for them. Whenever the players discover an important clue or valuable piece of intelligence, they mark Intel, and once all the boxes are marked they become able to call the Inquisition and request backup, or commandeer local Imperial forces in the Inquisition’s name.

It’s still sketchy, and I don’t know how long it will take me to finish, especially with everything else I want to do… but I have a good feeling about this. Of course, I seem to recall saying that about the last two versions, too…

THE MAGE: THE ASCENSION PORT

One of the old PDFs I’m reading is actually the first edition of Mage: the Ascension and… do you realise that Mage used to be fun? Like, there used to be things to do, instead of just being dropped in a dreary world and being told to come up with your own motivation. You could use magick to do actual cool things, instead of the cool things being gated off behind unrealistic numbers of successes. And the Paradox rules actually offered some guidance for what sort of problems might occur at what levels of Paradox, instead of just shrugging and telling you to figure it out. I mean, Mage always fascinated me, but I started writing a port for it largely because I could think of absolutely no way to run it as it was and wanted to invent some workable structure for it. I guess I was reinventing the wheel.

Anyway, that’s a lot of new ideas that I might look at implementing, but this week, what I actually did was sit down and iron out some better guidelines for Avatar Essence. I fear I’ve been frightfully inconsistent with what does and does not qualify a spell for that +1 bonus from a mage’s Essence, and since Arete rolls are locked at +0 for a long time, that bonus is kind of important.

So here’s what I’ve come up with for now, and that I think might work:

  • If your Essence is Dynamic, take +1 to any Arete roll meant to radically alter a situation or infuse it with more energy. If it makes a mess, it can be justified as a Dynamic Effect. Creation and destruction are both highly possible, and so is transformation – the frequent problem is going to be making the changes drastic enough to qualify as Dynamic without resorting to vulgar magick. You can’t just shift around a few pieces, the very rules of the game must change in some way. Knowledge spells are almost entirely impossible to claim as Dynamic Effects – understanding the current situation implies a state of mind that assumes it will remain relatively unchanged, and that is against all the Dynamic Avatar stands for.
  • If your Essence is Pattern, take +1 to Arete rolls to make use of what already exists, without adding or removing from it. If you are playing off something that is already in the scene, you can probably justify it as a Pattern Effect. It is difficult to use Pattern to create anything whole cloth or to completely destroy, but you can “improve” on what is already there or put their pre-existing flaws into play. Likewise, transformation is possible, but only to make things either sturdier or more complicated, never to both weaken and simplify them (for example, you might sprinkle perfectly symmetrical holes throughout the surface of a door, thus making it more complicated but also more brittle and easier to break. You could not claim Pattern for just making the door rotten, since that would make it more fragile without adding to its complexity). Spells of pure knowledge are the hardest to justify; the Pattern Avatar is jealous of information and considers everything to be on a need-to-know basis, though you can sometimes sneak something through by baking into the spell the idea that you need to better understand something in order to strengthen it or obey its rules.
  • If your Essence is Primordial, take +1 to Arete rolls to remove things, especially barriers and restore the original, unconstrained state of things. The Primordial Avatar dislikes forcing anything to be, but you can get a lot of mileage out of removing the reasons for it not to be and then letting nature take its course. Pure knowledge spells are relatively easy to manage as long as you can argue that you are removing something that is “blocking your sight”; for example, you could see through a wall by removing its ability to hide what was behind it. Pattern Effects can also be used quite easily to either heal (by “removing weakness and damage”) or destroy (by “removing strength and wholeness”).
  • If your Essence is Questing, take +1 to Arete rolls to experience the world, either by expanding your senses or by introducing yourself into interesting situations. Pure knowledge spells are always allowed as Questing Effects, but spells that actually do something are harder – they generally need to be justified as serving to move yourself into a position where you can learn things. Questing can never be used to keep something at arm’s length or to remain stationary and let the world move around you, only in either affecting or facilitating your own movement through the world.

It is possible to make an Effect draw on an Essence by defining it more tightly than the Spheres actually demand. For instance, a Disciple of Entropy Effect can disable any inanimate system, but this would not be a Questing Effect since most inanimate systems don’t block the mage’s movement (it would work fine as a Primordial Effect, since it would be dissolving artificial structures). However, defining the Effect to only target locks, bolts, and fetters in the mage’s path would let it be cast as a Questing Effect, since it would then be clearly in the service of the Questing Avatar’s goals. Assume that the Avatar is sentient and intent on enforcing its idea of the mage’s destiny; it will “bless” certain spells and not others, depending on whether those spells are in line with how it sees its purpose.

Likewise, it is possible to align an Effect with an Essence by making mundane actions part of its casting. For example, an Apprentice of Entropy Effect to detect a flaw in an enemy’s fighting style can’t be a Primordial Effect, since it can’t be justified as removing a boundary (the flaw, if it exists, is right there – your problem isn’t seeing it, it’s recognising it). However, an Akashic might create an Effect in the form of a “conflict-ending blow” that instantly and non-lethally incapacitated an enemy by unbalancing her at a split instance of weakness. Since the casting of the Effect could only be used to end a fight at least for the time being and could not be used to acquire knowledge without immediately acting on it, it could be justified as a Primordial Effect. The Effects blessed by the Essences can overlap – something could be both a Dynamic Effect and a Questing Effect (such as a personal teleportation spell; both a drastic change and a way for the mage to move into a more advantageous position), or both a Pattern Effect and a Primordial Effect (such as a spell to render poisoned water drinkable; it would at once improve the water for the purposes of being drunk and remove its harmful qualities). However, when codified into a Rote, an Effect always has the Essence chosen by the mage who created the Rote.

Again, it needs more work, but I think this will actually provide the sort of flavour I want.

MONSTROUS MISHAPS (FOR ONCE!)

Finally, I managed to do some actual work on one of my actual original games. Will wonders never cease? I’m trying to get the quickstart for my perpetually-almost-finished game Monstrous Mishaps together. I have gotten to the chapter on GMing, and that’s hard, because… er… I suck at writing GMing advice, as it turns out. It’s funny, I have no problem writing player advice, but for GMs I keep trying to think of something more helpful than, “just do it properly! You know, properly. Like, not in the way that causes me actual pain to watch. Do it in the way that isn’t like that. Jerks.”

I don’t know. GMing is more an art than a science for me, I guess…

Anyway, I did manage to put together ten suggested plot hooks, to give the reader a better idea of what sort of thing you get up to in Monster World.

  • A rival Monster managed to dump a barrel full of Jell-Oh over one of the PCs in full view of the Court. Now the PC has to find some way to PWN the prankster right back, or they’ll be a laughingstock for months.
  • Against his better judgment, a PC posted bail for his no-good brother-in-law, and then the jerk failed to show up for his court date. Time to go turn over every rock he might have crawled under, while an inept police detective is certain that the PC is hiding the fugitive and keeps interfering.
  • A PC’s boss is coming over for dinner. Nothing must go wrong! The problem is, the PCs live in a Maze, which is to say, a perverse haunted house with no regard for their career prospects…
  • A PC’s best mate has lost his job and his apartment, and a PC has graciously let him crash at her place until he can get back on his feet. However, after several months of him doing nothing but hanging around pitying himself, the cohabitation is starting to become a drag. The PC is going to have to somehow both find him a new job and get him to shape up enough to keep it.
  • A PC has somehow attracted an annoying Haunting that inflicts a taboo on him – whenever he hears a bell ring, he has to immediately do a silly song and dance routine or else suffer an unlikely and painful accident. There’s a counterspell to get rid of the curse, but it requires a bunch of bizarre ingredients that must be gathered from all over town. Too bad that the annual Bell-Ringing Festival is just around the corner.
  • A PC’s rich aunt wants him to babysit her bratty son for the afternoon. He’d better come back in one piece, or she’ll make some alterations to her will. The kid resents being babysat and has absolutely zero self-preservation.
  • A sneaky Slayer has spread the vicious rumour that a PC has been seen kicking a puppy. The good news is, the animal shelter needs volunteers, giving the PC an excellent opportunity to prove what an animal lover she really is. How hard can it possibly be to take care of a few dozen maladjusted critters with simmering grudges against all of humanity?
  • A PC has inherited an old house that needs to be cleaned out so they can sell it. This will require not only dealing with a bunch of squatters who aren’t happy about being ousted, but a grumpy Haunting that’s just woken up as well.
  • A PC’s ex-husband is refusing to share custody of their pet parakeet. Dragging him to court would probably not help, so there is nothing to it but a bout of parakeet-napping. Problem is, the ex is a Monster too, so it will require traversing his Maze.
  • The lady who accidentally ran into a PC’s mailbox last week is not only refusing to pay for damages. No, she’s also countersuing for emotional damages of the PC having irresponsibly placed a mailbox where innocent people might need to drive. The PC’s enemies are all too happy to offer damning character testimony, so the PC needs to find just as many people to assure the judge of what a nice fellow he is.

So there you go. Three actual samples of what I’m working on right now. Yes, Aberrant is so bad that it’s driving me to try to do better myself. Which is, admittedly, a positive effect common to many bad games, so perhaps it fills some sort of function in the cosmic order after all…