Fiend Folio...IN SPACE!

If your looking for some alien monsters for any old school science fiction game you could do a lot worse than starting with the original Fiend Folio, I think. I'm not even talking about things like reskinning undead as nanotech animates or victims of exotic plagues (though you can certainly do that); I think there are a lot of creatures in there that are just straight up science fiction.

The first creature listed are aarokocra, which are just straight up birdmen--like the Skorr of the Star Trek Animated Series and a bunch of other places. The algoid is a psionic algae colony; the CIFAL a colonial insectoid intelligence (it even has an acronym name). Osquips are pretty much ulsios from ERB's Barsoom stories. The grell already looks like a pulp sci-fi monster: I think there was one in Prometheus, wasn't there?

Yeah, there it is.

Anyway, demon, devils, and elemental princes are out without substantial overall, but some less interesting monsters for fantasy purposes might be made a bit more interesting in a science fiction context. Lava children   might be a silicon-based lifeform that (like the horta) needs to be contacted rather than killed. Yellow musk creepers and zombies (undead also-rans) would work great in a horror scenario on a deadly jungle world. Even the much maligned flumph is less silly when it's a weird alien (maybe).

Another Futuristic Cross Section

As the lady says: "Very impressive." You'll have to embiggen it to get the full effect, though. Even then, the writing is sort of small.

This is a cross section of the base of the Legion of Super-Heroes in DC Comics as it appeared Who's Who in the Legion of Super-Heroes (1988). It's quite a step up from their first headquarters:

Nothing says "serious superheroes" like an inverted rocket with the words "club house" on it.

Anyway, I don't think I have to point out the numerous game uses you could put a map like this to: super-villian lair, future moonbase, science fantasy dungeon. Go crazy.

Aurogov

Aurogov is a movement or polity based in the Zuran Expanse. It has been described as a quasi-religious voluntary tyranny (though its leaders consitently deny its religious character). Participants advance through levels ("The Protocol") wherein Aurogov teachings take greater and greater control of their lives. Adherents typically begin with a download of Aurogov’s open license self-help software, distributed by parties unknown in the noosphere of most civilized worlds.  The seed software slowly evolves into a nonsapient ai mind emulation of the (perhaps mythical) founder of the group ("The Prime"). Its progressive audits and critiques of the thought processes and behavior of the user lead to progressive behavior modification of susceptible individuals. "Advanced" members without public relations duties tend to dress in the same grey uniform like garments and use frequent aphorisms from Aurogov teachings in their speech.

Aurogov is thought to have its origins on Old Earth and is a multi-geneline--even mutli-species--organization, but its primary functionaries are a clade of gray-skinned, long-chinned humanoids who call themselves "Technicians" but are known to those outside the organization as Aurogovans. Defectors from the organization report the Technicians' habitat within the Expanse is also the home of the Ascended Masters of Aurogov: Individuals who have obtained superhuman powers by mastering all stages laid out in their central texts. There are always three Ascended Masters and they always hide their faces behind masks like giant eyes. They are either posthuman masterminds or a bit of theater to provide cover for the real leaders, depending on what defector you ask.

There are allegations or rumors that Aurogov and its Ascended Masters have a hidden agenda: they are actually engaged in a secret, psionic distributed computing project. Every new participant in the Protocol--every new mind they can access--brings them closer to their goal.

Attributes: Force 3, Cunning 6, Wealth 5
Hit Points: 29
Assets: Demagogue/Cunning 6, Organization Moles/Cunning 5, Marketers/Wealth 5, Security Personnel/Force 1
Tags: Theocratic

Warlord Wednesday: The Last Dragon

Let's re-enter the lost world with another installment of my issue by issue examination of DC Comic's Warlord, the earlier installments of which can be found here...

"The Last Dragon"

Warlord #127 (March 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Pencils by Jan Duursema, Inks by Tom Mandrake

Synopsis: Believing Tara dead, Morgan has left Shamballah and returned to wandering. After an encounter with a smilodon, followed immediately by an attack by a pack of raptors, Morgan is saved by a masked bowman named Dreadnar. Morgan loses his horse to the raptors, but decides to travel with Dreadnar for a bit.

Meanwhile, Khnathaiti is hiding from Skartaris’s eternal sun in a cave beneath the volcano. Her powers have diminished since the death of the Scavenger, but she manages to suck the life force of a rat to stave off decay. She swears vengeance on the Warlord who reduced her to this.

After acquiring some now horses, Dreadnar leads Morgan to the Vale of the Dragon. Here his people lived for a thousand years, worshipping the dragons that dwelt there and sometimes appeasing them with sacrifices of “unblemished maidens.” One year, the shamans withheld the sacrifice due to a famine, and the dragons attacked. Dreadnar and his elder son returned to the village to find it destroyed.

The two went on a rampage of revenge against the beasts, killing all but one: a female, with eggs. She ambushed them, killing Dreadnar’s son in a blast of fire. Dreadnar escaped with his life, but:

Morgan and Dreadnar come upon some scroungers digging around the remains of Dreadnar’s old village looking for valuables. Dreadnar routs them and would have killed their leader, but Morgan convinces him the rat isn’t worth it. The scoundrels haven’t gotten far when they’re roasted by dragon fire. Morgan and Dreadnar run for it and dive into a nearby lake for protection.

When they come up for air, it seems the danger may have passed. When again:

In the Siberian gulag, an old enemy of Morgan’s, Danny Maddox, watches Mariah be dragged off to be punished after standing up to the sadistic guards. She’s stuck in an unheated cell with no food. Maddox gives her a little gift:

Things to Notice:

• Shakira gets big hair in this issue.
• While it isn't the first time, the dragon in this issue is a "fantasy dragon" rather than a dinosaur like in previous issues.

Where It Comes From:
This issue shares a title with a 1985 film, but there really isn't a relationship between the two.

Danny Maddox first appeared as a young bully in Travis Morgan's hometown back in issue #91. Fleisher brought him back and gave him many more run-ins with Morgan over the course of their lives as depicted in Secret Origins #16 (July 1987), which seems to set-up his appearance here.

Retrofuture Crosssections

So Haynes Publishing has just released Dan Dare: Spacefleet Operations as part of their Owner's Workshop Manual Series, which already includes a couple on ships from Star Trek and one on the Thunderbirds.

While I have only passing familiar with the venerable British science fiction comic book hero, the sample illustrations shown in this article (from which the base above is taken) lead me to believe this manual would be very useful for any pulp sci-fi game.

The Reboot and Its Application

Like a lot of other people, I caught Star Trek: Into Darkness over the weekend. My capsule review: If you liked the first one as you watched it you will probably like this one as you watch it. If you liked the first one, you probably also experienced an increasing irritation with it the more you thought about it in the hours and days that followed. I suspect that will be you experience with this one.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about Into Darkness so much as the application of things like changes continuity in one way or another in rpg settings. Certainly, there are examples of retcons and reboots in published rpg settings; I'm more interested in what people do in their own homemade settings.

I suspect mild retcons are pretty common in long running campaigns. A little change in some aspect of setting when the GM gets a better idea never really hurt anybody--particularly if the PCs haven't even directly interacted with it yet. If they have, it gets a little trickier, but if G+ posts are any indication, settings are sort of continuous works in progress, even well after play starts.

I don't know about anybody else, but I've engaged in wholesale rebooting of one setting for much of my D&D career. The world of Arn (that I started this blog discussing) has elements that go back to junior high, though its gone through 3 map changes, place name changes (and sometimes back again), and conceptual shifts from vaguely backgrounded generic D&D world, detailed pastiche of Leiber, Howard, and Burroughs, synthesis of those S&S elements with whatever historical period I was interested in at the moment (from Ancient Rome to the 16th Century), and so on.

All of these permutations could be seen as just cannibalizing old ideas for economy of imagination, except that some of the same characters and background elements have been consistent pretty much the whole time--though their presentations have changed. The founders of one of the main cities in the world(s), have gone from actual PCs, to historical personages, to likely mythological characters.

Not only does this sort of thing save work, but I think it can allow for some of the depth of background that comes from a long-running campaign without actually having run a continuous campaign for all that time.

Suit Up

art by Simon Roy

EXOSKIN: a vacc suit of programmable matter. An exoskin forms around a wearer as they pass through a suit membrane aperture found before the airlock on a spacecraft. Once a wearer is clear of the membrane, the suit takes only a few seconds to finalize its configuration. Exoskins come in various forms from skintight to bulbous and oversized. They can be programmed to have slightly different properties, including opacity, color, texture, and thickness. They typically have the features and attachments common to other sorts of vacc suits, other than armor. Suit membranes have supplies of programmable matter based on the crew compliment of the ship. Small ones can create 5 suits. Larger ones may be able to create 20 or more with less than a minute in between. [Essentially the same as the Vacc skin in Stars Without Number in game terms.]