Mister Monster's Workshop

Tag: Game design

  • Creating Winnie Wurmstein, the Hoarder

    Hello and welcome back to my series of creating pregen characters for the Monstrous Mishaps quickstart (soon at an online store near you! Assuming I can get my ass in gear, at least). Last week, we saw the genesis of mild-mannered dork Klaus Kleinmann. This time, we’re on to the Hoarder. Let’s call her Winnie Wurmstein.

    Being a Hoarder (which is to say, a Dragon in human form), Winnie has to be obsessed with collecting ever more of something. I’ll say that her fascination is with artifacts related to Hauntings – not necessarily Haunted artifacts, but things that once belonged to someone who later came back as a ghost, or who was involved in mysterious goings-on of some sort. Things like that will be hard to get hold of while also being pretty much entirely useless – perfect for a Hoarder’s obsession!

    Since Klaus was such a meek and unadventurous character, I want to make Winnie a lot more active and gung-ho. She’s also going to need to know a lot about ghost stories and urban legends for her hoarding. As such, I’ll start with giving her Basic (4) Asskicking and Basic (4) Weirdness, making her a sort of two-fisted occult investigator. Being cheerfully loud and perfectly able to stand up for herself, I’ll also give her Limited (3) Dramatics and Limited (3) Grit. Finally, she’s pretty active and prone to running around, and also used to doing research and going over records, so she gets Limited (2) Fitness and Limited (2) Paperpushing.

    For her lifepath, I decide that Winnie was pretty over-enthusiastic even as a child (Metabolism of a Humming Bird), made a big production of things in school (Drama Club) and now runs a largely unsuccessful business dealing in occult curios (unsuccessful because obviously she can’t bear to part with her better finds…). That raises her Dramatics and Fitness to Basic (4) and her Weirdness to Basic (5). Her Breed Abilities are Keenness and Asskicking, so raise the former to Limited (2) and the latter to Basic (5).

    Winnie can use the Basic power for Wyrm’s Discernment (Nose for Gold – it allows you to pinpoint which object in your vicinity is most useful to you) in her “treasure”-hunting, so let’s give her Basic (4) Wyrm’s Discernment. I could give her another point in one of her Secondary Dooms, but that’d tank her Respectability completely (the starting value is calculated from how much of a Monster you start out as – the freakier you are, the less conventionally successful you will be) and she is supposed to run a business, albeit a small business, so let’s leave it there.

    Thus, she starts with Limited (3) Maze, Basic (4) Monstrosity, Basic (4) Pretension, Limited (2) Respectability. From that and her other Abilities, we can calculate her Pools as follows: Health Points 9, Grit Points 8, Stamina Points 8, Budget Points 2, Favour Points 4.

    Again trying to make her different from Klaus, I’ll give her the Values of Excellence and Individualism. Winnie is competitive and runs her own race.

    All in all, Winnie turns out like this:

    WINNIE WURMSTEIN

    Breed: Hoarder

    Childhood: Metabolism of a Hummingbird
    Adolescence: Drama Club
    Adulthood: Woo-Woo Artist

    Values: Excellence, Individualism

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

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

    Special Abilities: Limited (3) Maze, Basic (5) Monstrosity, Basic (4) Pretension, Limited (2) Respectability

    Dooms: Basic (4) Wyrm’s Discernment

    Pools: HP 9, GP 8, SP 8, BP 2, FP 4

    That just leaves us Winnie’s Relationships. First, to offset her love of the strange, let’s give her a Friend with the Stereotype of Bookworm and the Discord of Skeptic – he doesn’t believe in any of this supernatural nonsense, and never mind that Winnie lives in a fiery cave with a bunch of other freaks, those are clearly just special effects and frankly he’s hurt that she’d insult his intelligence with such clear fraud! But just to shake things up, we’ll give him the Problem of Occult Lightning Rod. He might not believe in magic, but magic is very attached to him and he keeps being under curses and influences that he refuses to acknowledge.

    WINNIE’S FRIEND #1: JOE GRIBBELS

    Winnie and Joe met when his more open-minded wife dragged him to Winnie’s store to cure a curse that gave him his own trailing rain cloud (“such a lot of fuss! It’s like she never saw a perfectly natural localised metrological phenomenon before!”). Oddly enough, he and Winnie actually hit it off, especially since he provides a steady supply of arcane mysteries for her to acquire relics of.

    Stereotype: Bookworm
    Problem: Occult Lightning Rod
    Discord: Sceptic

    Values: Excellence, Tradition

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

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

    Special Abilities: Basic (4) Respectability

    Pools: HP 6, GP 2, SP 2, BP 4

    For Winnie’s second Friend, let’s create her a partner for her occult curios store. We give her the Stereotype of Party Animal, the Problem of Not Right in the Head, and the Discord of Flake, to make her as unreliable for poor Winnie as possible – but she still has to somehow coax her back to work, since the business is shaky enough as it is.

    WINNIE’S FRIEND #2: LISA LUDLOCK

    Lisa is Winnie’s business partner, and together they run the Awesome Artifacts & Righteous Relics store. Lisa has the eccentricity of considering herself to be in contact with her grandmother, Greta Ludlock, who dispenses sage advice. Usually the advice is that Lisa is working too hard and should go do something fun for a change, which tends to leave the already-struggling store unmanned at inconvenient hours.

    Stereotype: Party Animal
    Problem: Not Right in The Head
    Discord: Flake

    Values: Community, Individualism

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

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

    Special Abilities: Basic (4) Respectability

    Pools: HP 6, GP 2, SP 3, BP 4

    For Winnie’s Rival, let’s give her a boring stick in the mud to contrast her own blithe spirit. We’ll give him the approach of Spoilsport and the Feud of Professional, and say that he’s an anal-retentive inspector who keeps trying to shut down her store for its various regulatory breaches. His Redemption can be Independence, further emphasising that he prefers things as simple and drab as possible. We’ll make him a Monster, specifically an Outcast, to give him some more (anti-) personality.

    WINNIE’S RIVAL: COLIN FRUMP

    Colin works as a health and safety inspector for City Hall, and has made it his life’s mission to shut down Awesome Artifacts & Righteous Relics for its owners’ blatant disregard for all that is good and bureaucratic. While not the most fearsome of adversaries, his sheer plodding persistence can be disturbingly effective.

    Approach: Spoilsport
    Feud: Professional
    Redemption: Independence


    Breed: Outsider


    Values: Stoicism, Excellence


    Primary Abilities: Minimal (1) Asskicking, Basic (5) Camping, Minimal (1) Dramatics, Minimal (1) Fitness, Basic (4) Grit, Minimal (1) Hiding, Basic (6) Keenness, Minimal (1) Mindgames, Limited (3) Nerdery, Basic (4) Paperpushing, Minimal (1) Schmoozing, Minimal (1) Weirdness

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

    Dooms: Minimal (1) Fae’s Trickery, Minimal (1) Pariah’s Desolation, Minimal (1) Varg’s Ferocity

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

    Pools: HP 6, GP 2, SP 2, BP 3, FP 3

    Finally, Winnie needs an Enemy, and being a Dragon, what better Enemy than a Damsel? Damsels, for those who are curious, are a special type of Monster-Slayer who don’t do much actual slaying but just sort of exist to tempt Monsters into victimising them, thereby providing justification for more go-getting Slayers. Think Bella Swan, only with Edward as the target for her endless whining rather than the one thing in the world she actually likes.

    Turning Winnie’s stats inside-out in the same way we did with Klaus last week, we get:

    WINNIE’S ENEMY: HOLGER MINX

    Holger and Winnie dated for a couple of years when they were younger, but eventually broke up due to a multitude of incompatabilities. Holger took the breakup so badly that he was Called as a Slayer on the spot, and ever since then he’s taken to hanging around and moaning eloquently about how horribly Winnie treated him, turning any soft-hearted people within hearing range against her in response.

    Legend: Complainer

    Values: Egalitarianism, Community

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

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

    Special Abilities: Limited (3) Calling, Basic (7) Respectability

    Pools: HP 6, GP 1 (+3 from Calling), SP 2, BP 7

    And that’s it! That’s the second of our six pregens finished. Join me next week, as we descend into the flaming nether regions of Hell, and stat up a Demon.

  • 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 Imperial weisenheimer

    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.

  • A game of real losers

    A game of real losers

    Monstrous Mishaps came about because I felt thoroughly sick of fake losers.

    The X-Men are really the ur-example here. Don’t get me wrong, I love the X-Men. They’re cool and colourful and dramatic and they fight giant robots, what’s not to like? But the idea that people like them would ever be some kind of oppressed minority is insane. They’re sexy and rich and hyper-competent and they have godlike powers. They wouldn’t inspire hate groups, they’d inspire fan clubs.

    Aberrant, for all its faults, is right on the money there. If people started manifesting incredible powers, then they wouldn’t be hunted down like animals. Nor would they start conspiring to take over the world. They wouldn’t need to. Because all the normies would hand them the world, free of charge! Power is attractive.

    No, it’s weakness that gets persecuted, weakness that – perversely enough – makes people hate and fear you. I blame evolution, frankly. We’re not wired to respond negatively to people who are strong, because those people are dangerous to cross but potentially useful to befriend. We’re wired to respond negatively to anyone who seems sickly and weak, because there’s no downside in pelting them with rocks until they go away. They weren’t going to help us anyway – they lack the ability – and who knows, whatever they have might be contageous.

    Knowing this from (ahem) painful personal experience, any sort of Randian “they hate me because I’m better than them!” moaning has always rubbed me the wrong way. And for someone who loves his fantasy, that’s a bit of a handicap, because fantasy is shock full of the sentiment. It seems like every other setting focuses on some group of supernatural beings who are stronger, smarter and wiser than everyone else, and who inexplicably get kicked around for it.

    So with Monstrous Mishaps, my starting position was this: can I create a group of supernatural beings who really would be kicked around, without making them have done something to earn it? Could I create beings with magical powers that were so useless, and whose weaknesses were so obstructive and crippling, that they’d naturally gravitate towards the very bottom of society?

    And that idea paired off nicely with another one that’s always fascinated me, that of essential identity unsupported by fact. I think it came from reading the Emperor Norton issue of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman back in the day. Here was a guy who decided that he was the Emperor of America, and was completely unbothered by the fact that no one else took him seriously, because why would an Emperor care what a bunch of peasants thought of him? Of course, his regal dignity was also the only thing that sustained him in the face of a life as a failure and a pauper.

    Or, for a less whimsical example, this angsty short story they made us read in Swedish class, about a guy who through mistaken bureaucracy was declared to be a moose. He ended up having to spend hunting season living at the town zoo since otherwise someone might shoot him without breaking any laws. Now that guy, you must admit, was a real hard-luck case!

    So taking that a step further, what if someone decided they were a dragon, albeit a dragon that inexplicably looked and functioned just like a regular ol’ human being in every way? What would that guy be like, as a character? Well, for one thing, he’d be kind of put upon, feeling like a failure for not getting to roost on a pile of looted gold like a dragon like himself ought to be able to. He’d see himself as a massive underachiever, wouldn’t he?

    So from there, I started sketching out my supernatural Real True Losers, the Monsters. I did give them some supernatural powers, because I felt like it’d provide some flavour, but I tried my hardest to make those powers as underwhelming as possible – the sort of abilities characters in most supernatural games could pull off right out of the gate, I placed at the end of a long and painful learning curve. I also added some supernatural weaknesses, the metaphysical equivalent of Mr. Moose Guy’s exile to the zoo, and made them as bothersome as I could manage without making the characters completely unplayable.

    And, like I outlined in a previous post, the setting of Monster World sort of grew up around that concept. It turned out that while the Monsters might be more benighted than most, no one in the setting was particularly successful. In fact, in the end I decided that Monsters weren’t even oppressed, at least not in any systemic way – their failure at living up to their archetypes was so complete that no one even cared, except for the Slayers (and mostly because they were all even more pathetic!).

    So in the end, I guess I didn’t quite achieve my goal of creating a genuine, realistic oppressed supernatural group. But hey, them’s the breaks. If I was used to succeeded at stuff, I wouldn’t have been inspired to make a whole game about failing!

  • So what is Monster World?

    So what is Monster World?

    The setting for Monstrous Mishaps just kind of developed on its own, and along the way turned out to be in a lot of ways more interesting than the actual Monsters it’s named for. When I first started sketching on the Monster Breeds, they inhabited some sort of vaguely gothic-punk reality, since – not to blow your mind or anything – I was mostly working off of a World of Darkness template, only with everything made as pathetic as possible. There were mentions of knives gleaming in dark alleys and Klutzes fleeing from angry mobs after they accidentally killed someone. It was, all in all, both derivative and kind of pretentious.

    But at some point, I started smoothing out the sharp edges. The fights became less deadly. The conflicts became more at the same time more frantic and with lower stakes. Characters stopped moaning in agony and started sighing in aggravation. It all developed more of a cartoony feel, with bright pastels replacing the shades of grey.

    At the same time, I was hard at work coming up with potential plot hooks for the setting. After all, my complaint about a lot of games is that they don’t give you a sense of what you should actually be doing with all those interesting setpieces. And what I ended up going back to were the sort of sitcoms and Disney comics that I grew up watching and reading. That fit nicely with the more upbeat feel of the characters, and in the end it sort of crystallized into a simple concept: Monster World is a place where people care about things in reverse proportion to how much they actually matter.

    Thus, to create a scenario in Monster World, just put the stakes as absurdly low as you can, and then have every GMC act like the fate of the world depends on them. You have a job delivering pizzas, and your annoying in-law is determined to delay you enough that he gets his pizza for free! Your neighbor borrowed your lawnmower and won’t return it, and has put up traps all over his property to keep you from stealing it back! At the same time, the actual risks and concerns should be treated as irrelevant – nothing really bad is going to happen, and things will more or less go back to normal by the next Story.

    This works really surprisingly well for creating silly situations that will make the players feel faintly ridiculous just for having to engage with them. And the rule system – which functions best when trying to do relatively simple things under trying circumstances, and where basic competence is so rare as to be almost a superpower – works really pretty well for it. As one of my play testers put it, take out the Monsters and it’s basically 90s Sitcom: The RPG.

    Which does make me wonder if maybe I would have been better off just ignoring the urban fantasy pastiche altogether… but, well, it’s a little late to revamp the whole thing now. Still, it might be an idea for a supplement somewhere down the line. I could call it Suburban Silliness…

  • Monstrous mojo

    Monstrous mojo

    All right, day two of my let’s-get-this-stupid-quickstart-finished marathon. I’ve read through everything I’d written so far and found it more or less passable, though I should probably put in one of those boring sections in the front that explained just what in tarnation this thing even is. I mean, I don’t know who would download this stuff without already having a pretty good idea, but somehow it just feels incomplete without it. Anyway, for now I’ve written up the combat section (unusually sparse, in this game – in my experience of playtesting it, fights do happen, but they tend to be short and frantic and undignified, so they don’t need a lot of complicated rules) and I’m working on the spellcasting system.

    That spellcasting system is one that I’m quite proud of, though I concede that there is probably some room for improvement. It draws a little on the freeform magic system from Angel, with some Unknown Armies and Mage: the Ascension thrown in for salt, but I’ve also added some additional structure to make it easier for the GM to manage.

    In its simplest form, it really just comes down to everyone in Monster World being able to work ritual spells. There is a single Ability for it called Hocuspocus, and any spell you might find or invent has a Challenge Level to cast, and if you pass the Challenge it goes off. Sounds a little too simple, right?

    Well, there are two things limiting you from just flinging around magic to solve all your problems. The first is it’s all gated by GM approval. You can cast only what spells that GM tells you you can cast at any given time – even if you’ve already cast a certain spell several times, the mystical conditions can have changed and now it won’t work again for another few centuries. Now, the GM is encouraged to provide at least some kind of suggestion for a spell you could attempt when you want to attempt a spell, because just saying “no” is always boring, but you’ll take what you can get.

    The second thing is the Conditions. See, every spell comes with between two and six Conditions: Cost, Blood Sacrifice, Complexity, Side-Effects, Misfire and Retribution. Cost means that you need something that you can get hold of fairly easily but not in unlimited amounts – you’ll have to spend either money or goodwill. Blood Sacrifice means that it’ll cost HP, either your own or someone else’s. Complexity means that there are some sort of finicky requirements that you’ll need to satisfy, requiring you to either go on a mini-adventure or otherwise have to rearrange your plans for them.

    The second half of the Conditions are sneaky, because when they apply, the GM won’t tell you until after the spell has been cast. Side-Effects mean exactly that, when the spell takes effect something else happens in addition to what it said in the recipe. Misfire, on the other hand, means that the spell just plain does something different than what you were told it would do, though it’ll probably still be in the general area – for example, you might cast a spell for being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and instead it turns you into a human rubber ball who can bounce over tall buildings (and then keep bouncing all the way down the block, because rubber balls aren’t known for being able to break on a dime). Retribution, finally, means that you get afflicted by a hostile force that keeps making your life miserable for some period of time after the spell is cast.

    Every spell has at least two Conditions, and the ones that have more get their Challenge Level for casting them lowered by one per Condition. That way, even some top-level spells might be available to novice sorcerers, albeit at considerable effort and cost. And again, the GM is the one who decides precisely what spells are and are not available to you at any given time. She might present you with one that can turn your worst enemy into a toad and which still only requires an Advanced Hocuspocus Challenge and no exotic ingredients, and you know that that means it’s got some subset of Side-Effects, Misfire and Retribution baked into it, but it’s tempting, isn’t it? You kind of want to do it just to see what happens, don’t you?

    That’s the idea. The sweet spot is meant to be riiiiiight where magic is probably strictly speaking more trouble than it’s worth, but it’s still sexy enough that the players want to try it anyway. Then the GM can just sit back and cackle maniacally, which is a thing that any true GM loves to do.

  • Introducing Monstrous Mishaps (properly, that is)

    Introducing Monstrous Mishaps (properly, that is)

    This being my third and final week of Christmas vacation, I have resolved to get my rear in gear and actually do some work on the Monstrous Mishaps quickstart. And while I’m at it, and just to keep my mind on track, I should probably post some information about the game here, too. After all, the blog is named after it, and I originally started it so I could have a place to promote it. It’s just that, being scatterbrained, I ended up talking about absolutely everything other than what I meant to. Oh well. Let’s see about making an actual introduction.

    Monstrous Mishaps takes place in a place called Monster World, which is a looser and sillier version of our own world. It is a world right out of a wacky sitcom or sardonic cartoon, where epic feuds are fought over petty disagreements, people turn their character defects into fervently held ideals, everything seems set up to be as annoying and unhelpful as possible, and no one ever solves a problem by common sense if a madcap scheme will do. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, but rarely in a way that will actually matter in the long run, and hilarity ensues at the drop of a hat.

    It’s also a world where some people are Monsters – Dragons and Goblins and Werewolves and Aliens and all the staples of pulp fantasy. But in keeping with Monster World’s general perversity, Monsters are only nominally Monsters. That is to say, they don’t look like Monsters, they don’t have the power of Monsters, and for the most parts they don’t even act like Monsters, but by some kind of obnoxious cosmic law they just are Monsters. Which kind of sucks for them, to be honest. It’s hard enough being a working schmoe without the world insisting that you are, in some ineffable way, a Giant. Especially when you keep getting fined for accidentally knocking buildings over, even though you shouldn’t reasonably be able to knock buildings over, and certainly can’t seem to do it on purpose.

    In Monstrous Mishaps, you play one of these long-suffering people as they go about their life. Think of it as urban fantasy playing out as a 90s sitcom. Your goal is to go about your life, impress your crush, keep from getting fired from your job, and foil your annoying neighbour’s attempts to mess with you, all of which is made harder by having a persistent and embarrassing metaphysical condition. It’s meant to be light, breezy, and poking fun at absolutely everything within poking range.

    Mechanically, the game uses an innovative diceless system where you have a fixed set of Abilities ranked with a Score of between 1 and 15. The Score translates into a Level: a Score of 1 is a Minimal Level, indicating the sort of thing that just about any bozo can do, a Score of 2-3 is a Limited Level, indicating a hint of talent or an amateur interest, and so on. When you try to do anything, the Game Master sets a Challenge Score for you to reach, sprinkles with situational Modifiers to taste, and checks whether you’re good enough to succeed or not.

    You can also goose your skill by spending Grit Points, which double your Score (after Modifiers) for the purposes of that one Challenge. You regain Grit Points by maintaining good relations to the important people in your life and by living up to the moral Values you’ve picked for yourself. Conversely, acting contrary to those Values makes you lose Grit Points – having the courage of your convictions is very important for a health self-esteem!

    That’s about the short version. I’ll try to add some more later in the week.

  • Grrrrr! Aaaarrggghhh!

    I got to break out my Werewolf port for the first time in ages (I have one campaign I run for the whole group and one campaign for each player who might be missing… yes, even I think it’s a little OCD, okay? But anyway, the player who needs to be missing for us to run Werewolf is the second-most reliable player in the group, so the Werewolf campaign doesn’t see much use). It was fun, especially since I think the mechanics really clicked for the first time.

    The big thing with Werewolf is supposed to be Rage. You’re a werewolf, you’re going to go berserk, it’s kind of your thing. You’re the Hulk, only furrier. Rage strengthens you but also takes away your control. And a large part of my reason for starting on this port in the first place (which led to my all-around porter madness) was trying to find a way to model that mechanically in a way that wasn’t too fiddly.

    I may have actually worked it out now, at least in a rough fashion. The way it works is, each player has a number of Rage boxes that start out unmarked. Every time a player fails a roll, they mark a Rage box. They can then clear a Rage box to heal wounds, pull off different stunts in combat, fight whole groups at once, and badassery of that nature.

    However! Whenever a player gets taunted too harshly, or fails in a way that feels too humiliating, or gets injured too badly, they have to roll +Rage (that is, 2d6 plus the number of marked boxes). If they roll 10+, they frenzy. If they fail the roll with 6-, conversely, nothing happens, but they mark Rage as usual when failing a roll. So the more Rage you have stored up, the more of an unstoppable killing machine you are in combat, but the greater the risk is of you completely losing your cool and smashing something you didn’t plan on smashing.

    The Rage economy worked out really well in the fight scene we ran tonight – the player used Rage to hit far above his normal weight class, got hurt and had to fight for control, gained Rage from avoiding frenzy, and then used that Rage for more fighting. This player is a relatively feeble little Ragabash (think scout/trickster), and his opponents were two fomori with military-grade rifles and body armour, so it was a tough fight, and I think the Rage mechanic made a lot of difference.

    We never did have to play out a frenzy, which is probably good, because those rules still need some work. Mechanics that take control away from the player are always tricky to formulate – you need players to still have choices, or else you’re just sitting there talking to themselves, but the whole point of Rage is supposed to be that you sometimes lose control. I am sort of considering an approach where I view it kind of like driving a speeding car that you can’t break, only steer – instead of asking, “what do you do?”, I might ask, “do you fight or flee? If the former, who do you attack? If the latter, which direction do you blindly charge off in?” With rolls required whenever they try to do anything that requires hesitation or forethought. I don’t know, though, there are a lot of pitfalls here. I’ll need to think on it.

    But it was definitely fun to try out this part of the rules!

  • Grimdark puttering

    Grimdark puttering

    No major progress on anything important this week – I’ve been two steps away from a nervous breakdown most of the time. Still, puttering around on this and that has, surprisingly, gotten me most of the way through outlining Rank 5 of the Dark Heresy port. And that’s kind of neat, because Rank 5 is honestly where the game actually starts to happen. That’s when you get to play around with power swords and big-boy psychic powers and cybernetic implants that lets you levitate.

    The entire first half of the game is you working your way up from “Imperial Guard draftee” or “underhive scum” to actually becoming one of the people the setting tends to really focus on. Which makes senes in theory – zero to hero is a thing for a reason, right? The problem is that it cuts you off from most of the source material – not all of it, by any means, there is the occasional piece of media that follows the people way down on the ground, but still, the pickings there are a bit slim. And I think the game designers did realise that, since they went on to release special rules for playing as an Inquisitor (even if they mostly amounted to, “just start by spending a gazillion points of XP”) and all the other games in the line were about being some kind of badass.

    I don’t know. I guess I’m not that much of a fan of zero-to-hero in general. It can be cool if you’re playing a really long campaign, but most campaigns don’t last for years of real life – whatever level you start on, you’re probably not going to be moving that far from it, so I think it makes sense to put at least a decent amount of cool stuff on it.

    I’m kind of looking forward to starting to adapt the other games in the series, because there I’ll find out if the system I’ve worked out can be adjusted to higher power levels and plenty of authority. That’s honestly what I enjoy running more – not games where the players are all-powerful or anything, but games where they have juuuuust enough power to get to make demoralising hard decisions. Being powerless means freedom from responsibility, and as my players could tell you (usually with a lot of long-suffering sighs), I do so love to inflict responsibility on them.

    In other news, today’s Mummy: the Resurrection session went well. It was the thirtieth one in the campaign, proving that sometimes they really do go on for a long time (so it’s kind of a shame that this is a system where character progression is a lot more plot-dependent and thus the players still aren’t that far from where they started out). It’s odd, it’s a pretty obscure and unloved game running on a glorified set of house rules, but somehow it just clicked. I kind of feel like I should change to a different campaign soon, because Lord knows there are plenty of other games I want to try, but at the same time, it seems a shame to stop when it’s going so well. Oh well, we’ll see.

  • Battle in the void

    Battle in the void

    Having continued my obsession with Warhammer 40,000, this week I sat down and wrote up some basic rules for void ship combat, drawing on the Battlefleet Gothic table top game and the Battlefleet Gothic: Armada video game. I ran a test session with those of my players who could make it this week, and it actually worked out pretty well.

    SHIP TYPES

    First off, I cavalierly ignored all the finicky rules about different hull types, at least as far as NPC ships go. Instead, I’ve divided ships into these categories:

    • Battleship: Hull 15, Shields 10, Armour 4, Turrets 4, Damage 2d10
    • Battlecruiser: Hull 12, Shields 8, Armour 4, Turrets 3, Damage 1d10h
    • Cruiser: Hull 10, Shields 6, Armour 2, Turrets 3, Damage 1d10 damage
    • Light Cruiser: Hull 8, Shields 4, Armour 2, Turrets 2, Damage 1d10l
    • Frigate/Destroyer: Hull 5, Shields 2, Armour 1, Turrets 2, Damage 1d5
    • Transport/Raider: Hull 3, Shields 2, Armour 0, Turrets 1, Damage 1d5l

    WEAPONS

    Secondly, there’s weapons. There are three kinds that I’ve outlined so far:

    • Lances: ignore Armour, but shields absorb them well. When a lance weapon hits a vessel, reduce the damage by the current Shield value, then reduce Shield by 1, to a minimum of 0. The remaining damage, if any, is subtracted from the ship’s Hull.
    • Macrobatteries: struggle against Armour, but can batter down Shields. When a macrobattery hits a vessel, roll the ship’s Damage, reduce the result by the current shield value, then reduce the Shield value by the same amount, to a minimum of 0. The remaining damage, if any, is further decreased by the ship’s Armour before being applied to the ship’s Hull. The Damage roll is also adjusted by the following considerations:
      • Targeted ship is at boarding range: +1 damage.
      • Targeted ship is at augury range: -1 damage.
      • Targeted ship is moving towards you: +1 damage.
      • Targeted ship is moving on a parallel trajectory: -1 damage.
      • Target vessel is a transport or raider: -1 damage.
      • Target vessel is a cruiser or battleship: +1 damage.
    • Torpedoes ignore Shields but can be shot down by Turrets. When a torpedo swarm hits a vessel, roll the weapon’s Damage and inflict it on the ship’s Hull, reduced by Armour+Turrets. If there is anything behind or right next to the target, roll the weapon’s damage again, minus the damage rolled the first time, subtracted by Turrets but not by Armour. If the result is positive, the object behind the target takes that much Hull damage, reduced by its own Armour+Turrets. Torpedoes can be fired at any range, even beyond augury range as long as the location of a target is known. Torpedoes must be reloaded in between each shot. The damage from torpedoes is adjusted in the following ways:
      • Targeted ship is moving towards you: +1 damage.
      • Targeted ship is moving on a parallel trajectory: -1 damage.
      • Target vessel is a transport or raider: -1 damage.
      • Target vessel is a cruiser or battleship: +1 damage.

    Ranged are boarding (up close and personal), artillery (at the maximum range of most guns), and augury (at the edge of what a ship can perceive).

    Weapons must be fitted somewhere, either as broadside weapons, prow weapons, or dorsal weapons (which can be used either as broadside or prow weapons). You can only fire a weapon at an enemy if it is correctly aligned according to the fiction.

    CRITICAL DAMAGE

    A ship that takes damage in excess of its remaining Hull suffers Critical Damage. That means that one of the following conditions get marked (the GM decides which one):

    When the players’ ship suffers Critical Damage, the GM marks one of the conditions below:
    [ ] Weapon offline (choose one) – the weapon can’t be fired.
    [ ] Shield generator offline – Shields drop to 0 and can’t be reignited.
    [ ] Enginarium damaged – the ship can’t come to a new heading or indeed turn in any direction; it can still speed up or slow down, though.
    [ ] Thrusters disabled – the ship loses forward traction and can only maneuver, poorly, by navigational thrusters; it can’t fire thrusters.
    [ ] Bridge destroyed – the command staff is driven from the bridge; take -1 ongoing to all void moves.
    [ ] Fire – a fire is spreading through the compartments. Until it has been put out, the GM can inflict 1d5 Hull damage, bypassing armour and shields, as a GM move.
    [ ] Augury array disabled – the ship is blind to anything beyond boarding range; it can not make an augury sweep or lock on target.
    [ ] Crew in disarray – the crew are rioting or panicking; the ship cannot fight in a boarding action, brace for impact, or refit and reload until order has been restored.

    VOID MOVES

    The following moves can be performed by any player taking a command position on a void ship. Void moves are primarily executed through dashing leadership and taking decisive charge of a situation, so any player can make any void move, irrespectively of whether it falls within their theoretical authority or not.

    When you fight in a boarding action, roll +Weapon Skill. 10-14, you inflict a Critical Damage on the enemy ship before being pushed back, or push boarders off your own ship before they can do any harm. 15+, you have the option to push onward. If you choose to do so, you either harry the enemy back to their own ship, inflicting a Critical Damage on it before retreating, or you gain a beachhead on the enemy ship; the fight will continue as a regular field battle, with the ships themselves playing no further part. If you do not choose to push onward, see result of 10-14.

    When you bring fire into the void, roll +Ballistic Skill. 10-14, you inflict damage by one weapon you have facing the enemy, and that enemy inflicts damage on you by one weapon it has facing you. 15+, the same, and you may also inflict a Critical Damage on the enemy struck, even if you don’t cause any Hull damage.

    When you fire thrusters, roll +Strength. 10-14, choose 1 option below, but you deplete your fuel stores; take -1 ongoing to this move and the come to a new heading move until you’ve had a chance to feed the engine. 15+, choose 1 option below.

    • You come to a sudden stop or power past a danger coming at you from the side.
    • You escape a pursuer or catch up to a quarry.
    • You ram another ship. You both deal damage to each other, reduced by Armour, and the other ship is knocked off course; if you have any broadside weapon, you may use it to deal damage on the victim on your way past.

    When you brace for impact, roll +Toughness. 10-14, hold 1 that can be spent on negating the effects of a hit. However, while you have any hold at all from this move, take -1 ongoing to all other void moves. 15+, the same, but hold 2 instead.

    When you come to a new heading, roll +Agility. 10-14, you change your heading to another one of your choosing, possibly aiming you away from a danger or getting a particular weapon facing an enemy. If there is an enemy, then he, at least for now, is sufficiently surprised by your deft maneuvering that it will take him precious time to adjust. However, you deplete your fuel stores; take -1 ongoing to this move and the fire thrusters move until you’ve had a chance to feed the engine. 15+, the same, but your fuel gauge remains comfortably stocked.
    Note: This move represents a sharp turn that puts serious stress on the ship and crew. Coming around in a wide, leisurely circle does not require rolling to come to a new heading.

    When you lock on target, roll +Intelligence. 10-14, you identify a weakness in an enemy vessel. Hold 1 that can be spent at a successful roll to fill the void with fire. If that roll is a result of 10-14, you can spend the hold to inflict a Crippling Injury. If the roll is a result of 15+, you can spend the hold to get +2 on the damage roll. 15+, the same, but hold 2 instead.

    When you make an augury sweep, roll +Perception. 10-14, you get a detailed analysis of everything that is currently with augury range of your ship and isn’t trying to hide itself, as well as being told if there is anything hidden or obscured (such as a ship running on silent or within a gas cloud or meteor swarm) within it. 15+, the same, and your excellent data makes planning easier. Take +1 forward to any other void moves within the same scene.

    When you command the ratings to refit and reload, roll +Fellowship. 10-14, choose 1 option below. 15+, choose 2 options, or apply the same option twice.

    • You reload a torpedo tube.
    • You prepare a new squadron.
    • You remove 1 point of penalties to come to a new heading and fire thrusters.

    When you order emergency repairs, roll +Willpower. 10-14, choose 1 option below. 15+, choose 2 options, or apply the same option twice.

    • You restore 1d5l lost points of Shield.
    • You undo 1 Critical Damage.
    • You restore 1 lost point of Hull.

    NPC SHIPS

    NPCs, of course, can’t make moves, and a lot of Critical Damage conditions don’t apply to them. They can be assumed to have a broadside macrobattery and either another macrobattery, a lance, or a torpedo tube in the prow. NPC ships will normally only fire torpedoes once in a fight. They have Shields, but they won’t normally reignite shields once they’ve been depleted.

    They also only have the following Critical Damage conditions that are normally marked in order:

    [ ] Shields disabled – the Shields drop to 0. If the Shields are reduced to 0 by being depleted by damage, this is also automatically marked; it exists as a condition to make it possible to drop shields prematurely (in the test session today, the players manage to bring down the enemy shields with a 15+ result on a torpedo barrage, without ever having to chip away at them).
    [ ] Weapon systems offline – the ship can’t fire any weapon. It almost certainly starts trying to flee or, failing that, shut down all systems and run on silent while performing frantic repairs.
    [ ] Enginarium damaged – the ship can’t navigate but drifts helplessly. The crew likely readies itself for a desperate last stand against boarders, though it might also activate the warp engines (likely resulting in a giant explosion if it’s still within the gravity well of a star system).
    [ ] Core meltdown – the ship explodes in a giant fireball, leaving a cloud of debris.