The Weird Town: Investigative Sandbox

Watching the 2012 Dark Shadows move this weekend got me thinking about the original show and just how many unusual things happened in that sleepy little Maine town. (True, some of them required time travel and even visits to parallel timelines, but still the same town.) It occurs to me that it would interesting to do a campaign set in a town with weird secrets like Collinsport, Twin Peaks, Crystal Cove from Scooby-Doo, Mystery Inc., or the titular Happy Town (in a show that died too young). A sufficiently large single edifice would do, too--like maybe Gormenghast.

The difference between these settings and larger settings is that investigation not exploration is the order of the day. They differ from traditional investigative settings in that the locale itself is mysterious, unlike New York City in any police procedural or Arkham in Lovecraftiana. This kind of campaign may be better suited to a game that has more of an investigative focus like GUMSHOE or even good ol' Call of Cthulhu. The PCs are probably new in town to heighten the mystery, but some may well have past connections to it: A connection that should give them a reason to investigate.

If you want to do more action-adventure stuff, you probably need something like more of a mysterious island like in Lost or--well--Mysterious Island. There, exploration and investigation can go hand in hand. Just make sure to play up the uncovering as much as the discovering.

Wanderers

The Wanderers are named for their habit of roaming the Zuran Expanse. While this might not be a remarkable activity for more common sophont types, the Wanderers are figures of mystery and wonder because they are posthuman minds the size of asteroids or small moons.

No one knows much about them. It's speculated that their former homeworld is some devastated planet or habitat within the Expanse. The popular belief is that, as they watched their civilization dying in the Great Collapse, they uploaded their minds and rejected humanity.

Whatever their origins, the Wanderers are currently hypersophonts whose minds reside in vast honeycombs of computronium, covered by a protective crust of rock or diamondoid. They vary in size from 15 to 20 km in diameter. Its unclear how many exist, but there are thought to be no more than a hundred. They are occasionally encountered in a group of as many in five, but such meetings are rarely observed as they tend to take place in the outer edges of solar systems.

The Wanderers don't seem to leave the Expanse; whether this is due to their leisurely sub-light speeds or some attachment to the area is uncertain. They rarely engage in communication with other sophonts, but sometimes they send a remote (varied forms, but mostly humanoids) to trade with other beings. The things they seek are sometimes necessary supplies but other times artifacts of no apparent value.

Occasionally, thieves get the idea that Wanderers have valuables in their interior--or at the very least, they can be relieved of their computronium. If this has ever actually been tried, it doesn't seem that it has ever been successful. The Wanderers zealously guard their privacy.

[Check out the Strange Stars Index page link in the sidebar for more on the setting.]

The Strange Stars

With nearly 40 posts in the Strange Stars setting, the sagacious Robert over at Rogues & Reavers suggested it might be time for an overview post to make it easier for people to see how these far-ranging elements sort of fit together. I’m not sure the best way of doing that (one might want to start with the inspirations here), but I’ll sort of summarize what’s been presented so far:

The Strange Stars is the sphere of the human phyle in the far future, a time millennia after the first human expansion and the rise (and fall) of builders of the hyperspace nodes, the Archaic Oikumene. In the current era, the Strange Stars are fragmented into smaller cultures and civilizations.

The former cradle of the Archaic Oikumene is a depopulated area without a central authority known as the Zuran Expanse. The Expanse is home to dangers like the inhuman ssraad (in three colors), and ruined worlds that entice treasure-seekers like Tenebrae and the Library of Atoz-Theln. It’s also home to unusual cultures like the invertebrate zhmun of Aygo and the self-improvement cult of Aurogov.

Art by Peter Elson

Spinward from the Expanse is the Alliance, a union of species allied for protection and trade. Members of the Alliance include the green-skinned psionicists of Smaragdoz, the privacy obsessed neshekk of Kuznuh, the avian-humanoid splice hyehoon of Omu, the human-alien blended cyborg Blesh, the gnomes of Dzrrn, and the angel-like deva of Altair.

Bordering the Alliance is the expansionistic and theocratic Instrumentality of Aom.

On the other side of the Expanse is the Vokun Empire. Besides the decadent vokun, the empire contains several client species. The cybernetic crustacean-like Engineers build much of Vokun technology. The yellow-skinned ibglibdishpan are their biologic computers. The kuath are bioarmored child-soldiers.

There are a number of other interesting cultures and worlds: the oneirochemist Phantasists, the ancient mind excavators of Deshret, and the warrior-poet moravecs of Eridanus, among others. The major galactic powers are at least openingly cordial (whatever may go on behind the scenes) and trade takes place between the two “civilized” portions of the galaxy that must pass through hyperspace nodes in the “wilder” areas (not just the Expanse, but the Rim and Coreward Reach, as well). New cultures, lost since the Great Collapse are discovered from time to time, and their are number of ruined worlds with treasures to loot.

Phaser

We resumed our Google+ Star Trek game last night in Starships & Spacemen 2e. I had done some statting of Trek stuff that I hadn't shared on the blog, so I thought this was a good time to give the wider internet world a view of some of that.

Here are my stas for Phaser Type I from the original series, gleaned from FASA's version and non-RPG sources.  The ranges are low compared to the weapons given in S&S, but shorter ranges are in keeping with what we see in the show.  Weight of a Type I phaser is 0.44 lbs. The "drain" uses FASA's assumptions of 20 shots for the Type I.

Type I Phasers have the following settings:
1- stun: Save vs. stun check at a 2d6 penalty or be knocked unconscious for 1 turn. Range: 100’ (Drain: 1)
2- wide angle stun: Same as Stun above, but generates a cone-like beam extending for 30’. At 30’ it is 6’ ft.wide. (Drain: 4)
3- Heavy stun: Save check vs. stun (2d6 penalty) or be knocked unconscious for 2d4 turns. roll 1d6 for the results: 1-2, no damage; 3-5, 1d6 hp damage; 6, 2d6 hp damage. Range: 100' (Drain: 2)
4- heat: 1d3 damage to living things, but mostly used to warm up objects when applied over longer periods (roughly 1 round). Range: 6’ (Drain: 1)
5- disrupt: 2d6 damage. Range: 70’ (Dain: 2)
6-dematerialize: 4d6 damage on a hit, Save vs. energy attack or be disintegrated. Range: 30‘ (Drain: 4)
Overload: A phaser set to overload makes a progressively higher pitched warning sound for 1 minute until it explodes, doing 1d6 x its remaining charges in damage.

The purpose of the variable penalty on the stun effect was arrived at in playtest. It was a way to ensure stun was usually effective while still proving a bit of chance to it.

Warlord Wednesday: The Vision Quest

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 Vision Quest"

Warlord #129 (May 1988)

Written by Michael Fleisher; Art by Jan Duursema

Synopsis: Morgan is awakened from a nightmare about Tara and the Scavenger of Souls by a woman on “bronto-charger” who’s being chased by “blood-crazed marauders.” As he’s wont to do, he leaps to her aid without any real clue as to what’s going on. Morgan and woman (no slouch in combat herself) quickly dispatch the marauders.

She introduces herself as Aoife, Battle Maiden of the Cuchulainn Clan.

Morgan knows those people. Aoife is pretty far from home. She explains she’s chasing a vision she had:

Somehow, those images mean she is to meet her destiny on the Isle of Xur-Chemosh in the Tourmaline Sea. Morgan has never heard of it, but he's just wandering anyway, so...

Meanwhile, in another part of Skartaris, Mariah’s bathing in a pond under the watchful eye of Danny Maddox. That turns out to be luck when a winged serpent attacks her. Danny does it in with his automatic rifle.

Immediately after, they meet a group of veiled tribesmen visiting the watering hole. The tribesmen lead them back to their village in the middle of an unusually parched desert, surrounding a half-buried spaceship.

Not everybody is so welcoming. The high priest thinks no one can kill a sky serpent. He warns the strangers to stay away from the shrine. We also learn the name of this place is Xur-Chemosh. Quite a coincidence, eh?

Despite the priest’s warning, the first thing Maddox and Mariah do is check out the spacecraft. They find a skeleton with a weird flight helmet—which Maddox immediately puts on. The priest arrives and starts calling them defilers. Before the situation can escalate:

Maddox knows how to stop them. He presses a button and energy beams shoot out of the spacecraft, killing the monsters. Maddox is hailed as a savior.

Beginning their quest for Xur-Chemosh, Morgan and Aoife enter a village. Aoife gets a premonition that a stone wall is going collapse, she manages to scatter the villagers, but would have got hit by it herself, if Morgan hadn't intervened.

Back in Shamballah, Jennifer is worried about what’s going on in Khnathaiti’s cave beneath the mountain. Jennifer puts a spell on a bird and sends it out to do some recon. Khnathaiti sees it coming and knows whose it is. She blasts it—blasting Jennifer, as well.

Things to Notice:

• This is the first issue of Maddox's Revenge.
• The letter column reports that Warlord goes to bi-monthly with this issue due to lowsales.

Where It Comes From:
With the introduction of Aoife, Fleisher starts hitting Celtic mythology and languages pretty hard. "Aoife" itself is an Irish female given name meaning "pleasure" or "radiant." Cuchulainn (Irish for "Culann's Hound") is the name of a Irish mythological hero.

Xur-Chemosh, on the other hand, comes from "Chemosh," a god of the Moabites mentioned in the Bible.

IN SPACE II: Modrons and More

When I did a post about using Fiend Folio as a source for aliens and monsters in a science fiction game, the idea met with a lot of enthusiasm, largely because everybody likes the Fiend Folio. I'm going to court a little more controversy today and assert that Monster Manual II may be even better in this regard.

First off the easy stuff. It's got a whole slew of dinosaurs and giant (and minimal) animals and insects. Those are mostly kind of boring though. A bit more interesting are exotic things like the aurumvorax or is it a Barsoomian honey badger? Who knows.

The cool stuff comes with the monsters that are already sort of sci-fi. The aboleth remind me a bit of Larry Niven's thrint (except in appearance) with no modification. The Vagabond's description already tells us it's from another planet. The cloaker and the crysmal likewise work pretty much as is. Memory moss is positively Star Trekian, if we only make it's power psionic instead of magical. The wemic are a lot like Poul Anderson's Ishtarians in appearance.

Art by Wayne Barlowe

Then there are ones that will take a little more thought. Maybe a demilich is some sort of nanoswarm? Is a Tarrasque a fearsome bioweapon of an extinct civilization? And the Modrons? Well, I figure they're probably sentient programs living in an ancient computer network, Tron or Reboot style, waiting on adventurous netrunners to stumble into their mainframe.

Hellhound on My Trail

art by Alan Davis

Of all the dangers in the Zuran Expanse (and there are many), perhaps none provoke as many nightmares the hellhounds or fury hounds. Though there are less than twenty of these monsters in existence, they’re reputed to have decimated small cities and forced the destruction of entire habitats in an effort to keep their threat from spreading.

The hellhounds are synthetic beings, sophont weapons of mass destruction; though if the tales are to be believed, they were originally created for a very different purpose. Allegedly they were once the playmates of  lonely prelapsarian princeling in an isolated habitat. Though their basic minds only mimicked sapience, the canny princeling improved their programming, possibly by using elements of his own neural structure.

The princeling grew to a psychopathic adulthood. He hosted sadistic games for the amusement of his courtiers (mostly mind-copies of himself) in which victims were hunted by his former toys, evolved to a more suitably vicious form. In time, the creatures had outgrown this roll, but by then it was too late for their master to stop what he had thoughtlessly begun.

They still hunt, but are generally undiscriminating: Anyone and everyone are fair game. They aren’t mindless beasts; in fact, they're quite erudite and likely to attempt to engage their prey (or at least taunt them) with allusions to and quotations from pre-Great Collapse works of art before the kill.

The hounds are the size of earthly great cats and appear as vaguely canine in form, but with triangular heads more reminiscent of birds of prey or perhaps serpents.  Their faces are much more expressive than an animal's would be. Their bodies are made of computronium sheathed in a quicksilver smartmatter skin. Their limbs can contort or flow in surprising ways, and they can squeeze themselves into smaller spaces than might be expected. They regenerate damaged; a fist-sized portion of their substance can regrowth the entire creature with time, an energy source, and a material substrate. They can survive for indeterminate periods in hard vacuum.

They hunt in packs.

No. Appearing: 1-4
AC: 4
HD: 7
Saving Throw: 11
Attack Bonus: +8/+8/+6
Damage: 2d4/2d4 claws, 1d8 bite
Movement: 40’
Morale: 10
Special Abilities: Their hides provide a -2 penalty to hit with laser weapons. They regenerate 3 hit points per round, starting after 2 rounds of combat. They have the ability of total cellular regeneration similar to the biopsionic power Nine Lives.