Look Out! Pink Elephants on Parade

“I could stand the sight of worms,

And look at microscopic germs,

But technicolor pachyderms,

Is really much for me.”

- “Pink Elephants on Parade”

Those who become too inebriated or intoxicated, invite the astral invaders known as pink elephants into their minds. These creatures appear as gelatinous, multi-colored, bipedal elephants, with sinister, leering expressions and eyes as featureless as the abyssal depths. They are non-corporeal, and can only be harmed by magical means, except by other astral beings. They cause fear in those able to see them (unless they make a save vs. magic).  Unreasoning fear drives those that perceive them to fight for their lives against the elephants as if they are corporeal beings--which can lead to the victim inadvertently injuring themselves or those around them. During this period (which lasts 1-4 hours) the victim's mental faculties (Intelligence and Wisdom) and dexterity are effectively reduced by 1d4. After the resolution of the elephants' attack, the victim will sleep for 2-12 hours and awaken with a monstrous headache. There is a 33% chance that an encounter with the elephants will lead to more serious, permanent impairment of mental abilities, if a save vs. death is failed.

Pink Elephants: HD 3, AC 7 [12], Special: cause terror, noncorporeal.

The Ten Cent Menace

A weird menace haunts the newsstands and magazine racks of the City. Behind some seemingly innocuous--if lurid--paper cover there lurks an alien entity with an appetite for human minds. This entity has no official name, but is sometimes called the “shudder pulp” after the odd “some walked across my grave” feeling people often describe upon first encountering it.  A warning, perhaps--which they generally ignore.

The entity appears as a pulp magazine of the most prurient variety. It changes the specifics of its title and cover image on each occasion, but invariably teases tales of violence, sadism, and the macabre. There are some reports of the entity appearing as comic books as well, but these have no been verified.

A purchaser will find the pulp largely indistinguishable from any mundane publication of the type. The stories will be as expected from the cover, though perhaps a little less logical and more nightmare-like that would be typical. A Wisdom roll upon first browsing its contents gives the victim a change to recognize the inherent wrongness of the publication and avoid further harm. A failed roll means the victim will read the entire volume, over a period of time. unless there is some intervention.

Every story read (there will be 2d6 in the volume) will require a saving throw (with a progressive -1 for every previous story read) or result in the loss of 1d4 points of Wisdom. When a victim's wisdom drops to 0 they disappear from prime material plane, and no where knows where they are taken.

In addition, even having the item in one’s possession requires a saving throw every 1d6 days or else the possessor acts as if under a Suggestion spell and performs increasingly depraved acts (though starting at the relatively mundane) bearing some similarities to those depicted in the stories in the volume.

The entity may be destroyed by any of the usual means used to destroy a mundane magazine (HD 1-1). Destroying its physical manifestation breaks its spell, and limits further effects. However, it will likely re-coalesce elsewhere in a slightly different form in 1d10 days.

Truth, Justice, and all That Other (Gaming) Stuff

This weekend I picked up Green Ronin’s DC Adventures: Hero’s Handbook, which is the main book of their new DC Comics rpg. It utilizes the the latest iteration of Mutants & Masterminds' take on the d20 system--the version that’s going to be in Mutants & Masterminds 3e, which is suppose to be coming this fall.

My history with role-playing in the DC universe goes back to 1985 and Mayfair’s DC Heroes. That was the third superhero rpg we played--after Villains and Vigilantes, and the first edition of Marvel Super-Heroes. Mayfair’s system (later to be dubbed the Mayfair Exponential Game System and be acronymized as MEGS), was a little unusual and abstract, but it did allow a world to exist that went pretty seamlessly from street level to cosmic, and it used kind of cool, balanced “parallel mechanic” for physical, mental, and spiritual activities.

My group played a lot of DC Heroes in its second edition incarnation from 1989. Unlike, interestingly, our long-term Marvel game, we didn’t use “real” DC characters, but made up our own instead. In fact, I don’t know that those characters actually inhabited the DCU because I can’t recall if we ever interacted with any of the “big names.” I think we found it had a better character generation system that Marvel which, even in the advanced game, always seemed like it was an afterthought to the designers.

Anyway, back in the present day, I haven’t given DC Adventures a thorough reading, but right off the bat I notice a few changes. The ability scores have expanded beyond the D&D standards. There’s “stamina,” which is probable renamed “constitution,” but there’s also an agility in addition to “dexterity,” and “charisma” is missing, but “presence” appears. They don’t run the usual 3-18, but instead the score now seems to be the old bonus/penalty that was related to the score. This caused a moment of confusion when I paged through the book and saw Batman with a Dexterity of “7”--which is actually pretty high once I figured out what they were doing.

Some other changes seem inspired by other superhero rpgs. Powers seem a little more “effects based” than previously a la Champions, but I may be overstating this, because there doesn’t seem to be a huge change, here--maybe just in how they present it. “Fighting” is now an ability score--shades of Marvel Super-Heroes. In another MSHRPG call-back that made me smile, the determining of the damage condition from an attack is now decided by referencing a table which has color-coded columns of green, yellow, and red (and also blue) like the much-beloved Universal Table.

I haven’t reviewed the book enough to start the inevitable quibbling about the stats of famous characters, but overall it looks pretty good if you like Mutants & Masterminds, and makes me interested in seeing the third edition/