Free RPG Day is Over, but...

...There's still some free and low-dough cool stuff to be had. "Like what?" you ask. Well, there's Clatterdelve, a free old school mini-adventure from your friends at Hereticwerks. While you're there, check out the other free stuff in the widget on the right hand side.

When your done there, stroll over to Tim Shorts's Gothridge Manor Patreon page and pledge what you like to support his series of mini-adventures. If you don't already know Tim's work from The Manor 'zine, you should probably check that out, too.

Strange Stars Covered

Over the past few of months, I've teased with art from the upcoming Strange Stars Setting Book, which is going to be a full-color, fairly art heavy (for an indie product, certainly), systemless intro to the setting that I've been chronicling on the blog. It's companion, the system book, I may have only mentioned once. I've said it is planned to be art-free and "just the data"--but that doesn't stop it from having a cool cover. Or two:

The book is envisioned as flipbook style, like the old Ace Double novels. Lester B. Portly and I thought it would be cool to have both covers be homages (and it allowed us to use the same gorgeous cover illustration by Eric Quigley in two cool ways). On the left is the cover for the Stars Without Number compatible side and the right is the Fate Compatible side (written by that FATE SF guru John Till). Both books will feature pretty much the same stuff: the game translation of most of the species, factions, and places presented in the setting book.

Stay tuned for further updates. We're hopping to get both books to you in early Fall.

Hwuru Revue

Art by Waclaw Wysocki

Appearance & Biology: Hwuru are bipedal sophonts hailing from the Coreward Reach that bear some physical resemblance to Terran apes and sloths. They are shorter than humans but powerfully built with arms longer than their legs, and digits with claw-like structures (actually bony projections covered with horn) on their dorsal surface. They're covered with shaggy fur except on the anterior surface of their torsos, which are covered with leathery plates.

The hwuru evolved from arboreal insectivores. They have small, beak-like snouts (like the Terran echidna) and extendable tongues to aid in snatching up arthopods or their larvae in hard to reach places. Hwuru can’t swallow anything very large and must have bulkier foodstuffs made into a mash before they can consume it. Most hwuru have a mild dependence on chaoofsh a chemical attractant released by the trees native to their world. When off-world, they tend to wear a breathing apparatus to deliver this chemical.

Culture: On their native world, no hwuru have advanced beyond the Iron Age, and most live in tribal societies that use stone tools. Interaction with starfaring civilizations has afforded hwuru the chance to leave their planet, and they are sometimes found among the stars where their physical traits make them useful as hired muscle.

Stats: hwuru have a minimum strength of 12. There are no known psychics among them. Their bone claws do 1d4 damage. They all natively possess a background skill at climbing, for which they get a +1 due to their claws.

Wednesday Comics: Aftermath

Here's the final installment of Jim Starlin's Metamorphosis Odyssey. The earlier posts in the series can be found here.

"Aftermath (Metamorphosis Odyssey Chapter XIV)"

Epic Illustrated #9 (December 1981) Story & Art by James Starlin

Synopsis: Vanth awakens in a forest, surprised to find that he and Aknaton are alive. Aknaton explains he wrapped them in a mystic bubble that protected them and put them in suspended animation. His astral ego guided them to this world because he sensed Vanth's destiny lay here.

Vanth asks about the others. Aknaton explains that they still live, transformed into beings of pure energy. They are now gods; the Milky Way was sacrificed so that they might live.

It's all gone, and Vanth and Aknaton are in a different galaxy:

Vanth turns angrily on Aknaton. It's all gone--everyone--and they killed them. Aknaton prefers to think of it as sparing them from the Zygoteans. Vanth notes than Aknaton didn't hang around to see his handy work.

Aknaton replies that he had the power to save himself, so he did. He saved Vanth, too, because Vanth's work was not yet finished. His talents are needed:

Vanth doesn't like that:

Aknaton thanks him. He wanted Vanth to kill him. As he dies, he charges Vanth with a task. The people of this galaxy are at a moral crossroads: The can change their worlds into a paradise or spawn a new race of Zygoteans. Vanth must lead them down the right road. If he can't, the Infinity Horn still exists, and he knows where to find it. Vanth must be this galaxy's savior--or its destroyer.

Aknaton dies and Vanth is alone.

Things to Notice:

• Vanth guns Aknaton down rather than using his sword, which would have had greater irony.
• The stage is set for Dreadstar here, but with a backstory Dreadstar never really puts to full use.

Commentary: 
So in the end, Vanth's story largely recapitulates Aknaton's. He's the last of his "people" (in this case, the entirety of the Milky Way), charged with doing something horrible if he can't set a wrong right. In a sense, his execution of Aknaton passes the burden along.

Starlin has said that Metamorphosis Odyssey was in a sense a meditation on the Vietnam War. All the characters have their own reasons for following Aknaton, the mad architect of the war (with a nose like a caricature of Richard Nixon). I think this on one hand sells the work short, while simultaneously attempting to give its fuzzy allegorical narrative an unearned resonance. It doesn't account for the role grief might play in Aknaton's actions or allow for the consideration he might have made the right choice. Also, it perhaps absolves the others of a bit of responsibility (as the story seems to, honestly) by implying they are dupes rather than the largely willing participants we see them to be.

Looking at it through the lens of Vietnam, what are we to make of the ending? Is it okay to wage a war of annihilation if it's in the name of moral correction? Who gives Vanth the right to make that sort of choice--other than Aknaton whose hands are dirty and whose judgement we must question?

Secret City

An email from a friend yesterday on everybody's favorite holiday destination of Zheleznorgorsk (it's flag is pictured above), reminded me that secret cities aren't just for hidden cultures in comic books.

Zheleznorgorsk used to be called Krasnoyarsk-26 (like all Soviet secret cities, it was designated by a post office box). This town made produced weapons-grade plutonium. All the Soviet "closed cities" were doing secret military (mostly nuclear) or space stuff. The cities didn't appear on maps and could only be accessed by special permit.

This sort of thing just didn't go on in the USSR; Oak Ridge TN was similar deal in the U.S. during the days of the Manhattan Project.

The gaming value of a secret society out to be obvious. Beyond the spy/espionage genre, what better place for a zombie outbreak to start or a legion of Soviet Man-Apes to be based? Of course, if none of that is fantastic enough for your setting, Brigadoon (or Gemelshausen)--or it's gore-splattered redneck counterpart--is just another sort of secret city

Thinking About Rifts

Blame Blizack over at Dungeonskull Mountain. His posts about Rifts have got me thinking about how I would tweak the setting for a game. It's likely this madness will pass, but here are some of the things I've thought about:

Rifts and Zones
The areas of rifts in the fabric of reality shouldn't be just gateways to other dimensions or sources of magical energy. They ought to be really strange and dangerous; A lot like the zones in Roadside Picnic. The rifts would be alluring, though, as sources of high technology to reverse-engineered. A lot of advanced tech might have been acquired this way. There would also probably be a cargo cult element to many human societies.

Retro-Future
Rifts was published in 1990 and in its DNA is material from 70s and 80s post-apocalyptic films and comics, 80s anime and manga, and the general genre zeitgeist of the age. It wouldn't change a lot, I guess, but it might be fun to assume an alternate history where our world of smartphones and mp3s never existed. It was the future of Neuromancer and Ghost in the Shell that led to the world of Rifts. And that future looks like the Logan's Run TV series and the Kamandi comic filtered through the tech and style of Akira, Appleseed and Walter Jon William's Hardwired.

Comic book
The kitchen sink-ness of Rifts and it's big action have a real comic book sensibility. Not in the sense of superheroes (not as traditionally considered) but in the way that every character is distinctive and has their own look and schtick--and maybe even G.I. Joe style codenames. No PC should be "just a merc"--or even "just a vagabond."

Inner Spaces

You can never have enough cross section maps. Here are a couple from Marvel's Micronauts:

The starship Endeavor:

And the robotic Bioship: