Creating my Gods of the Fall Character

Are You a God?

Last week I did a cover-to-cover read through of Gods of the Fall, the brand new Cypher System campaign setting written by +Bruce R Cordell, as preparation for this past Sunday's Cypher Live show.  I spent several nights in my family room with a full cup of tea, flipping through page after page of this exciting new setting book, thinking about all of the possibilities that cool godlike characters would have in the Afterworld.  Typically when I read a setting book, I'm crafting campaign design ideas... but not this time.

I wanted to play this game!

Lucky for me, my good friend and Cypher Live co-host +Marc Plourde scheduled a one-shot to playtest an adventure that he's throwing together for Gods of the Fall.  I promised that I wouldn't include any spoilers in this blog post, so you'll just have to keep a lookout for a future module by Marc.  So no adventure recap or review.

But I do want to talk about the character I built:

Sinuba

A Beneficent Savior who Shepherds the Dead, God of Death (Tier 2)

(GM's Note:  Yes, Sinuba is just an anagram of "Anubis".  Also, if this were a movie, I'd see this character played by the Indian actor Ayeshka Dharker from Outsourced and Doctor Who: Planet of the Ood.)

I've always been fascinated with the idea of benevolent, "good-aligned" death deity, so that was my inspiration for Sinuba.  Sinuba's divinity was revealed to her after dying and immediately returning to life.  She plans on using this second chance to restore Soulrest to a place of eternal rest for those souls who peacefully lived out their lives in the Afterworld.

I thought the Savior type would be the best build to create Sinuba, especially with its emphasis on social interaction abilities.  I didn't want Sinuba to shy away from combat when necessary, but she believes that violence should always be a last resort.  This is also reflected in her Beneficent descriptor.  Sinuba strives to help others complete their journeys in the Afterworld, and impart upon them wisdom, understanding, and car.  

But note my phrase "complete their journeys."  I used Beneficent as a death god's descriptor, but then again, death is just another natural part of life.  Sinuba doesn't see anything wrong with pointing out that people die, often to people that completely fear the process.  So her idea of being "beneficent" can sometimes come across as being morbid and cold.  

Mechanically Beneficent allows Sinuba to help out her "pantheon" (it ain't a "party" when your a bunch of gods) both in and out of the action.  After spending a full day with Sinuba, other player character's get a boost to their Recovery Rolls.  In addition, Sinuba can always help someone as if she's trained in a skill.  The downside to Beneficent's many perks is that all Speed and Intellect tasks are one step more difficult when she is alone.  For most of last night's game she hung out with +Jeremy Land's Champion.

Stat Pools

• Might:  8
• Speed:  12
• Intellect:  18 (Edge 2) 

As a Savior with the Shepherds the Dead focus, Sinuba needed a lot of Intellect, and some Intellect Edge, to power her abilities.  In combat I figured she'd stand back and use a bow, so having some additional speed could be useful later on.  I wasn't worried much about Might, but I'll share why in a few moments.

Since we started at Tier 2, I had an additional 4 stat pool points to distribute, as well as another point of Intellect Edge.  

Type Abilities

• Tier 1
• Enthrall (Comes with Savior)
• Practiced with Light and Medium Weapons
• Interaction Skills (Pleasant Social Interaction, See Through Deception)
• Erase Memories
• Advancement Skill: Death/Funeral Rites
• Tier 2
• Practiced in Armor

Being the talker of the group, I wanted Sinuba to be able to handle difficult social challenges through various techniques.  Saviors start with Enthrall, and Erase Memories comes in handy during covert activities.  Sinuba gained training in pleasant social interaction as part of being Beneficent, so Interaction Skills made her specialized in this task.  Also, any good death god needs to understand how the dying process works.

While I didn't see Sinuba as a front line fighter, I still wanted her to be able to handle herself in combat.  Practiced With Light and Medium Weapons combined with Practiced in Armor allowed Sinuba to take up Katar (light weapon) and Shield, wearing a suit of Plate Mail armor.  

I wanted to give her a medium melee weapon, but I ran out of purchases!  

Focus Abilities

• Tier 1
• Question the Spirits
• Tier 2
• Spirit Accomplice

Again, I can't spoil last night's game, but I can say that both of these Focus Abilities came in handy.  Question the Spirits allows a player character to ask questions of a dead soul, so long as the character has a piece of their body or one of their possessions.  Spirit Accomplice grants the player character a Level 3 soul to command.  Most of the time I used this Spirit Accomplice to dash forward and make it easier for Sinuba to hit her foes with arrows.  

Dominion Abilities

• Tier 1
• Manifest Nimbus
• Tier 2
• Self Aware

I used Manifest Nimbus just one time to make a grand entrance in front of some NPC's, but never got around to trying Self Aware.  Sorry, can't comment much.

Divine Shifts

• Resilience: 3 Divine Shifts

Sinuba may only have 8 point of Might, but she is hard to kill!  My God of Death can don a Shroud of Repose, effectively donning a suit of spiritual armor created out of the souls that wish to aid their future Queen of the Afterlife.  Mechanically this gives Sinuba three additional points of armor, and three Power Shifts of Might Defense (essentially three free levels of effort.)  

*     *     *

So that's my Gods of the Fall character.  Thanks again, Marc, for running such an amazing adventure last night!  

If you've created your own gods already, please share them with me  I'd love to see your own creations!

A Festival of Iron - A Numenera Adventure

(For best reading, make sure to listen to Mariachi Entertainment System's cover of the Millennial Fair music from Chrono Trigger.  Oh, and then like and subscribe to them, because they are EPIC!)

Last Minute Prep

A couple weeks ago I posted a request for Numenera players on the G+ Cypher System One-Shot Connection.  It had been quite some time since my last one-shot, and I wanted to keep the good vibes flowing in our new group.  I quickly gained a bunch of participants, but felt confident that by game time I'd be prepared with an adventure, perhaps something out of the Cypher Caster or Weird Discoveries.  

The days ticked by, one by one, and I kind of forgot to prepare something.  I thought to myself, "maybe I'll just wing it on Friday."  Even though the Weird Discovery adventures are a piece of cake to cobble together, I always have an easier time running my own Numenera adventures.  Plus, I had my Numenera Cypher Chest and Rory's Story Cubes to help me flesh out any details.

So Wednesday morning, while enjoying my banana with peanut butter breakfast, I wrote down four sentences/sentence fragments:

• Use the Millennial Fair from Chrono Trigger as a theme.
• Wooden pirates (either made of wood or stealing wood) interested in the Westwood of Navarene.  
• The fair should include lots of gross out moments.  
• Feature the Iron Wind as the antagonist.  

The most important part of this was the Iron Wind.  The haunting details of this terrible Ninth World scourge can be found on page 135 of the Numenera rulebook.  The Iron Wind is a storm of rogue nano machines that painfully transforms everything it touches.  Flesh becomes steel, stone becomes bone, new organisms sprout from old.  

I'm probably wrong, but to date I haven't read a Numenera adventure that featured the Iron Wind as the principle antagonist.  

Going into Friday I was confident that I could come up with something crazy completely on the fly, but I decided to expand on my notes and add a few more.  I had a couple hours before game time, so why not make things look a little more professional for my players?  I took those few sentences and began expanding into a full adventure outline.

I'd like to present to you that outline!  

Back in January I posted a similar outline for my first draft of Metal Myk's Mercs, and it seemed fairly well received.  Perhaps you can use this outline as a starting point for your own adventures!

On to the notes...

A Festival of Iron

(GM's Note: I originally titled this "The Iron Festival" but I think I like this new title better.  Let me know if you agree/disagree.)

Inspirations

• The Millennial Fair sequence from Chrono Trigger
• Scenes from the movie Twister
• The Two Streams facility from the Doctor Who episode "The Girl Who Waited"

Map

• Use the 16-bit map from the Millennial Fair found here
• Re-skin map as a fairground covered in a massive, opaque dome

Background

Sider (pronounced sid-ur) is a small village of about 1,000 located on the Cape of the Maw in the Sea Kingdom of Ghan. Although Navarene claims the Westwood, the people of Sider have mechanical devices of their own, and great “battery boats” that take them across Ryness Bay. These “lumber pirates” have outwitted Navarenes, the Emol family, and the Culova, to supply the City of Bridges with some of the finest wood available.  

But they have managed to keep the real treasures of the Westwood for themselves.

The Siderian lumber pirates discovered that many of the trees in a particular grove of the Westwood have pieces of the numenera buried within the rings of the trees and contained within ancient amber.  These caches contain some of those most incredible cyphers and artifacts ever to be found in the Ninth World.  

Every year the people of Sider hold a special spring festival to celebrate last year's “wooden raids" and boost excitement for the upcoming summer of lumber piracy.  They call this the Gatherer's Festival.  

Siderians

The people of Sider benefit from some terrific machines that have been left behind by a prior world, and so they are a people of tinkers and machinists.  All Siderians have the equivalent of the "Fuses Flesh with Steel" focus, and are born with their mechanically augmented bodies.  As Siderians grow up, they consume a diet high in metals that helps their bodies form proportionally.  

(GM's Note: Make sure to come up with an interesting augmentation for every Siderian the party encounters.  Perhaps they have a metal jaw, or legs, or arms.  Maybe it's just a metal mohawk   Each one should be unique.)

(Another GM's Note:  Not only did I have the Cypher Chest and the Rory's Story Cubes to help we with adventure generation on the fly, I also cracked open my Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG rulebook!  In the back of the book is a great table of random NPC names.  I borrowed quite a few.)

The Gatherer's Festival

In previous years this celebration happened outside, but this year Mindus, elder of Sider, erected a grand dome containing hundreds of numenera enhanced Westwood saplings, and illuminated by ever glowing lights acquired on a previous raid.  

The Festival Dome is comprised of a single entrance and three step-like tiers:

• Entrance:  A simple opening in the dome.
• On either side of the opening are a pair of greeters, one man and one woman on either side.
• The greeters offer water from metal chalices, and try to entice the player characters (PC's) to enter the Festival Dome.
• Tier One: The lower tier features all manners of games and entertainment.  
• Worm Darts:  A game of chance where the PC throws straightened, dartlike worms at bubbles that float up from a small machine.  If the PC hits a bubble, they get to keep the worm (after it is dipped in a syrupy substance, and brought back to life.)
• Yasmina the Fortune Teller:  An older woman with a metal jaw tries to bring the PC's back to her tent.  Once there she will tell them their fortunes.
• Yasmina sits on top of a rug woven from cord that helps draw a flow of information from the Datasphere to her tent.
• Use the Rory's Story Cubes to come up with each PC's fortune.  Roll three dice and come up with a story.  Go nuts!
• The Foot Race:  A young teen signs up runners of all ages for a simple foot race that circles Tier One.  There is a foot race every hour, on the hour.  The winners of the foot race get a randomly determined Oddity (Numenera page 314.)  
• Tier Two:  Lined with food stalls and single strange storefront, there are so many weird and somewhat off-putting smells coming from this level.  Of course, native Siderians have no issues with the weird aromas.  
• Sal's Salted Culova Eggs:  PC's who have been to the Westwood and know the Culova as intelligent spiderfolk will be horrified to see the boiled eggs found here.
• Q's Cube Clams:  Each of these tiny morsels is a small, square shell with a sweet clam bite inside.  These Cube Clams can be found just off the coast in Ryness Bay.
• Thresher Jelly:  A sweet, jiggly pudding that everyone at the Gatherer's Fair raves about.  Feature Thresher Jelly whenever possible, with everyone eating the tasty goodness.  The stand itself is certainly bizarre, as the jelly comes from a large grey box with a single spigot.  On top of the box, the head of an ashen faced man is sticking out.  His name is Thresher.  Every time Ganto (the Thresher Jelly seller) turns the spigot dispensing the jelly, Thresher groans in agony.  
• The Gland Shoppe:  To the east of Tier Two is Esterra and her gland manipulation parlor.  For the cost of a single oddity, Esterra can implant either a Chemical Factory or Skill Boost cypher in the form of a brand new gland into a PC.  This gland does not count against the PC's cypher limit, but the alien nature of the gland costs the PC 1 point of Might for each day that it's in their body.  If asked, the glands are procured from a living plant-person that is kept chained up in the back of the tent.  If freed, their name is Aldus, and they would very much like to get back to the Westwood and their family.  
• Aeon Priests:  A pair of Aeon Priests, Kumo and Steeev, are in the center of Tier Two examining the pieces of numenera covering the grounds, walls, and trees all around the Festival Dome.  They both seem very concerned about the concentration of numenera, and that no good could come of this much technology in one single place.  
• Tier Three:  The highest part of the Festival Dome has a center stage area where a pair of machines are covered.  To the east is a raised platform where a speaker will obviously stand.  To the west is a training area where a large automaton stands.
• Romm & Kishta:  Sider's greatest lumber raiders and numenera hunters, this father (Romm) and daughter (Kishta) team are the main attraction of the Gatherer's Festival.  Elder Mindus cannot wait for them to unveil their finest discovery from the depths of the Westwood.  
• Romm is dressed in a foppish, almost Las Vegas style Elvis impersonator outfit.  He has metal legs.
• Kishta is wearing a practical leather vest that covers her one flesh arm but not her metal arm.  Despite being only 25 her face is covered in scars and old battle wounds.  
• Milo the Automaton:  A great, 10' tall metal humanoid stands in the center of a small practice field.  This is Milo, an amazing machine that Kishta found in the Westwood sitting next to a tree.  Kishta believe Milo to be a prior world's lumber felling bot, but now just use him for combat practice and for lifting heavy objects.
• Milo (Level 5)
• Health: 18
• Armor: 4
• Movement: Short
• Damage Inflicted: 5
• Every time Milo is struck by a metal object, the sound is deafening, requiring everyone in an immediate distance to make a difficulty 5 Intellect Defense Roll or be stunned for a single round.  
• When first encountered, Milo is in "Combat Mode" and its fists are locked in a closed position.  A special tool (carried by Kishta) is required to set Milo's fists into a grasping position (for carrying stuff).  This can also be done with a difficulty 5 repair/mechanical check.  
• Milo is practicing with a pair of Siderian children (level 2) who paid for the opportunity to face off against the machine.  Milo won't harm the children beyond giving them a few lumps.  For the price of 2 shins the PC's can try their hand at besting Milo.  At 0 health the automaton shuts down, but is not destroyed unless the PC's try to inflict another 10 points of damage against the machine.  
• The Stage:  Romm can be found preparing for the big unveiling of the Teleportation Discovery.  Of course, he will not tell anyone the details about the discovery.  
• The Teleportation Discovery appears to be a pair of metal platforms, each with four plastic rods that rise 8' from the bases.  There is a curtain behind the metal platforms, and peering behind reveals what looks to be an exercise bicycle and all kinds of Ninth World technology connected to the discovery.  Obviously Romm has done quite a bit of jury rigging. 
• Point of clarification: the Teleportation Discovery is not a teleportation device.  It's actually a single Time Machine that has been split in two.  The device itself is Level 7, and any kind of scanning or study will reveal that the two pads just need to be placed one over top of the other, creating a cage at the center with the combined eight rods locking in place.  
• Once locked, grasping the correct series of rods will create a blue aura to surround the machine, and send it forward in time at 14 hours per second.  
• The Time Machine Discovery only has enough power left to move forward for five minutes (30 days per minute, so 150 total days).  After that it will shut down.
• If the PC's could read an ancient language that is incribed on the bottom of the easter panel, it would say "DO NOT attempt to use this Time Machine as a Teleportation Device.  Doing so will attract rogue nano bots."  Okay, that's not entirely true, but it's pretty much where this adventure is going.

Adventure Outline 

Before the Iron Wind

• When the PC's arrive in Sider describe an amazing village of old metal buildings and tubes sticking straight into the sky, encircled by a functioning but rickety moving sidewalk.  Sider is a place where ancient technologies are restored, celebrated, worshipped, and adored.  
• Let the PC's explore the Festival Dome and the Gatherer's Festival, taking part in the games, revelry, and entertainment.  
• If the players seem reluctant to let their hair down, have an NPC show up and try to engage them.
• After enjoying the fun for some time, Mindus the Elder will make an announcement from the platform on Tier Three that the great explorers and numenera hunters Romm and Kishta will be unveiling their great discovery.  

(GM's Note:  I ran this as a 2.5 hour adventure.  I let the PC's explore the fair for about half of the game before having all hell break loose.)

• Mindus will call for everyone to Tier Three where there are several rows of chairs and a lot of standing room.
• Adorned in all his finery, Romm will tell the audience that he and his daughter discovered an incredible device that will allow Siderians to travel to and from the Westwood without their expensive battery boats.  Pulling back the curtains, he reveals a pair of metal platforms and asks for a volunteer.  
• If the volunteer is a PC, this is a fantastic time for a GM Intrusion.  Hopefully you've thrown a few in at this point.  Since the Teleportation Discovery is actually a Time Machine Discovery, engaging the devices improperly causes a major malfunction.  One of the PC's cyphers, determined at random, is set off, causing its effect immediately.  
• On top of the cypher going off, the Iron Wind shows up, drawn by corrupted machine interfacing with the datasphere surrounding Sider.  Perhaps the Aeon Priests were right, and they should've have collected all this numenera in one place!
• The rest of the adventure should involve the PC's trying to survive the Iron Wind as it destroys the village, the Siderians, and the Festival Dome.  

After the Iron Wind

• The ultimate destroyer of the Ninth World, treat any interaction with the Iron Wind as a level 7 difficulty.  This may seem impossible to deal with, but careful use of skills, equipment assets, terrain, and NPC's will help their chances.  If there was ever a time to use effort, now is the time.

(GM's Note: If used as an adventure for first time Cypher System players, make sure to point out that with an asset, a trained skill, and a level of effort a difficulty 7 easily drops to a much more manageable difficulty 4.  Encourage creativity!)

• The Iron Wind will start killing people outside of the Festival Dome.  Siderians begin rushing into the dome screaming with terrible transformations perverting their bodies.  
• Go crazy with the descriptions.  Flesh becomes stone, mollusks emerge from villagers' faces pushing out their eyes, children become full grown aneen.  Depending on your players, go graphic with the details.  
• Double down on describing risks of leaving the Festival Dome on foot.  
• As the PC's come up with creative ways to get away from the Iron Wind, create tears in the dome itself, with terrible creatures bent on destruction erupting from the walls.
• I re-skinned Blood Barms (Numenera, page 232) and Sathosh (Numenera, page 257) as warped humans.  
• Well equipped PC's may have cyphers or artifacts that will transport them away from Sider, so encourage these devices to be used.  But if not, there is one more way to salvation: The Time Machine!
• Scanning or using mechanical knowledge on the Teleportation/Time Machine Discovery will reveal that the two pieces need to be placed back together.  
• Since each is quite heavy, they can be manipulated through a level 6 difficulty might-based lifting test, or other engineering genius. 
• Once one is placed on top of the other, up to eight PC's/NPC's can hide inside and move themselves forward through time.  Doing so protects the time travelers from the effects of the Iron Wind.  So long as they move forward three full days, they will be clear of the Iron Wind's effects.
• Make sure to describe, in your own special way, the horrors that befall Sider.  Make it crazy!
• Eventually the Iron Wind will eat through the entire dome shell, causing it to fall down in puddles of grey ooze.  Hopefully by this point the player characters have done something to fix their situation.  If not, go for the TPK (total party kill.)  Their next characters will be much more careful.
• Give the PC's 2 XP for surviving the adventure, and another 2 XP if they find a way to use the Time Machine Discovery as their means of escaping a horrifying death.

About Last Night

We had three PC's during last night's game:

• Tes, the Impulsive Nano who Rides the Lightning, played by Chad
• Voren, the Mechanical Glaive who Fuses Flesh with Steel, played by Sam
• Illid, the Stealthy Jack who Explores Dark Places, played by James

There were a ton of creative solutions to the challenges facing the group.  Sam role played Voren as hating Aeon Priests, so he used a cypher to teleport himself to Kishta's automaton directly from Tier One.  I offered a GM Intrusion to have Voren appear directly on Milo's shoulders.  This interaction created an easy connection between the PC's, Romm, and Kishta.  

Since the group's nano didn't have the Scan esotery, I inserted a new artifact on the Aeon Priests that Illid pocketed:

• Scanning Sprayer
• Level 3
• Grants the user the Scan esotery, but with a modified Immediate range.  The sprayer must be six inches away from what is being scanned.
• Depletion: 1 in d10

To escape the Iron Wind, the PC's scanned the Time Machine Discovery, figured out its use, and then talked Kishta into using Milo to lift the two pieces together.  Kishta had been busy caring for her father, whose arm was terribly injured.  During the demonstration of the device, the volunteer (Tes) had a cell disrupting cypher that exploded!  

I almost forgot to add, that when Voren got hit by some Iron Wind, I dipped into my crazy archive of memories and brought out Kuato!  Remember that mutant from Total Recall?  Voren felt a humanoid shape appear in his belly, which he immediately carved off.  Poor guy!  

*     *     *

We had a great time last night, and hopefully some of you readers may find this adventure worthy of placing in your own games.  If you do happen to use this adventure, or even a part of it, please let me know!  

Mutant Crawl Classics Inspirations

The Mutant Crawl Classics Kickstarter is entering the final days of a much anticipated campaign, so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the +Jim Wampler's labor of love.  A long-time listener of the Spellburn podcast, I've heard Judge Jim make reference to his post-apocalyptic variant of the Dungeon Crawl Classics system on several episodes.  My interest was piqued, but unfortunately I had a limited frame of reference for the original inspiration.  MCC seemed rooted in the old Gamma World system, and while I've flipped through some of the old books, and glanced at the newer editions, I've never run a Gamma World adventure.  

The MCC preview in last year's Goodman Games Gen Con 2015 Program Guide proved to be an excellent window into the future of this product, transforming me into a hungry, roxen-meat craving, wannabe wasteland crusader!  Like many other fans, I joined the MCC Facebook page and waited patiently for news, any kind of news, of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.  

After getting my hands on the Free RPG Day copy of "The Museum at the End of Time" I quickly scheduled an Actual Play video to showcase the MCC system:  

To prepare for the adventure, I sat down and started listing potential sources of inspiration, not only for the Museum, but also for future campaigns.  Although clearly post apocalyptic, with a backstory that features something called the "Great Disaster", Mutant Crawl Classics reaches much further in the future than Mad Max or Fallout.  Terra A.D. (After Disaster) is a world where technology is studied, worshipped, and sometimes feared.  

Judge Jim has already posted his list of "Appendix M" inspiration on the Kickstarter page, and you should definitely check out his selections here.  

But allow me to add a few of my own:

The Time Machine

You know the story.  Take your pick of either the old H.G. Wells book or one of the movies, but the far future world of the Eloi and Morlocks could easily be used in a Mutant Crawl Classics campaign.  Pacifist Pure Strain Humans living just above endless caverns filled with bestial, near-cannibalistic Mutants or Manimals.  This could make for a single adventure, or possibly the starting point for an entire campaign setting.  

Crystalis

A Nintendo title from 1990 by SNK, in Crystalis you play a nameless hero who erupts from some kind of stasis pod after the Earth has been transformed by nuclear war.  Magic returned to the Earth, and you set out on a quest to stop an evil emperor from gaining control over a magical tower.  The game does feel quite a bit more like science fantasy than science fiction...hmmm... science fantasy... 

Numenera

Wait.  Isn't this another tabletop RPG?  Yes, and it's one that I tend to discuss quite a bit.  But I bring it up now because the 9th World of Numenera has some similarities with Terra A.D.  Terra A.D. is a place where technology exists, but the means to create it have been forgotten.  Thus, anything left from the previous age must seem like magic.  Numenera follows the same premise.  The key setting difference between the Ninth World and Terra A.D. is a simple (but incredibly vast) measure of time.  Whereas Numenera takes place one billion years in the future, from what I've read of both the preview and Judge Jim's posts, Terra A.D. exists several thousand years from now.  

This isn't the first time I've brought up a Cypher System/Dungeon Crawl Classics mashup.  A few months ago I created a list of 9th World occupations for something I like to call Numenera Crawl Classics.  

Speaking of tabletop RPG inspirations, has anyone discussed Paranoia yet?  

Portal 2

If you haven't played Portal 2, stop what you're doing right now and go play.  Once you're finished you can come back and finish this post...

... I'm waiting... 

... are you done yet?

Much of Portal 2 feels like questing through a far-future, puzzle-filled dungeon with only your trusty Portal Device (*cough* Artifact) to save you from various AI's.  Most of the test chambers are dilapidated and run down, covered with weeds and dripping with foul, oil-filled liquid.  The only way through is by completing the tests, or else you risk an AI's ire.  I could see Patron write-ups for GLaDOS and Wheatley for sure!  

Yor: The Hunter from the Future

The eternal Reb Brown classic!  Dinosaurs, barbarians, lasers, this movie just SCREAMS Mutant Crawl Classics!  It's as if the entire movie is one long campaign, starting off as more of a primitive adventure but eventually bringing in all kinds of artifacts and gear.  As a child of the 80's, I fondly remember watching this movie on HBO.  This was back when you had to toggle something in the back of your TV to get cable to work.  Just like manipulating an artifact!

The first thing I'm doing when I get my MCCRPG core book is recreate Yor as a future player character.  

If you are unfamiliar with this movie, I highly recommend you watch the Spoony One's full review.  

*     *     *

So these are my suggestions, but what would you recommend?  What other books, movies, television shows, or video games could be added to +Jim Wampler's "Appendix M?"

Kid Wizard vs. DM Chuck - My First RPG Experience

Since the beginning of the Living 4 Crits blog I've wanted to tell the woefully short tale of "Kid Wizard", my very first tabletop role-playing game character.  I'm still not sure why it's taken me so long to write about my first experience with an RPG, especially since I hear so many gamers on podcasts share their own first times.  Actually, given the way the whole experience turned out you'd think I never would've returned to the table.  

It helps that I had an extremely talented Dungeon Master.

DM Chuck

It all started twenty-five years ago, with a simple game of Dungeons & Dragons.  Chuck, my Dungeon Master To-Be, was a year older than me and lived across our street in Levittown, Pennsylvania.  Growing up, Chuck was a natural leader and organizer, always gathering the kids on our block into various activities.  If there was football being played on "The Hill" (the mound surrounding a local drainage ditch), Chuck was arranging teams.  If street hockey was on the menu, Chuck provided the net and all the pads.  Of the eight boys who lived on the lower end of Handy Road, Chuck was the group's ever present event planner.    

I need to point out that Chuck's parents had an extremely high tolerance to loud kid voices.  Their house was always filled with children of all ages, pretty much taking over their living room, den, kitchen, bedrooms, and backyard.  I don't know how they put up with us all.  

My dates may be a little shaky, but sometime between the winter and spring of 1991 Chuck started talking about something called "RPG".  Not "an RPG", or "the RPG", just "RPG."  At first I thought the game had something to do with "rocket propelled grenades", probably because of my overexposure to Rambo movies.  I blame '80's cinema.  Eventually this conversation led to the arrival of a mysterious red box...

... the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, Set 1 with the Larry Elmore cover!

Word got out that some of the other kids, including Chuck's two younger brothers Jeff and Chris, were "making characters" for this game.  Naturally I wanted to be a part of the group, so I scheduled some time to sit down with Chuck and create my first character. 

Okay, at the time this was probably just me walking over and asking to make a character, and then his mom telling me to come back later, but in my mind I will always remember "being summoned" for that very special moment.  

Kid Wizard

Chuck's house had a den in the very back, with a bunch of comfy couches.  That's where Kid Wizard was born!  The name sparked a bit of an argument because Chuck insisted that I couldn't be a "kid" if I were a Magic-User.  I would need a long beard and a pointy hat.  My counter argument was probably rooted in Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series, and Presto the Magician.  

Here's all I remember about Kid Wizard's stats:

• Class: Magic-User
• Language: Pixie
• Starting Spell: Ventriloquism
• Weapon: Dagger 
• Money: Not enough gold for a silver dagger

Being able to speak Pixie confused the heck out of me.  In my twelve year old mind Pixies were a combination of the fairies from The Legend of Zelda and Popples.  The starting spell also kind of stunk, especially when I realized that I could only cast it once per day.  

Really?  I'm a great and powerful sorcerer with one spell that I could cast once per day?  What good is throwing my voice going to be?

Chuck assured me that I would be the most powerful character on the entire block, because no one else was playing a Magic-User.  But this would take time, and I'd need to attain a bunch of levels before attaining true mystical might.  

Kid Wizard wouldn't last the evening.

Character creation was quick, and Chuck's dad wasn't finished cooking dinner, so he offered to run me through a short session to try out the rules.  Here's my attempt at an adventure recap of something that occurred back in 1991.

The Legend of Kid Wizard

Kid Wizard's career began in a small town.  Unhappy with only having a dagger as his weapon, Kid Wizard longed for a silver dagger to add to his arsenal.  So Kid Wizard walked into the local weaponsmith's shop and asked to purchase a silver dagger.  The weaponsmith looked at Kid Wizard's pitiful pile of silver and copper and declined to make a sale.  

"This dagger's twenty-five gold," the burly weaponsmith stated.

At first he was disappointed, but then Kid Wizard thought up a plan.  The young Magic-User grabbed the silver dagger from the weaponsmith's hand and bolted out of the shop.  But before he could make it to the nearby alley, Kid Wizard heard the weaponsmith shouting.

"Guard!  Guard!" the man screamed.

Sure enough a pair of guards saw the young pilferer and gave chase.  But Kid Wizard was prepared for this.  Using his trusty Ventriloquism spell, Kid Wizard mimicked the voice of the weaponsmith from behind the two guards.  

"Let him go!" the fake voice shouted.  

One of the two guards fell for the spell, but the other continued to chase Kid Wizard.  Eventually the guard reached the Magic-User, and cut him down with a single blow of his long sword.  Kid Wizard died, still clutching his beloved silver dagger.

The End. 

Back for More

It took a few months to get back to Chuck's table.  It wasn't long before he purchased the AD&D 2nd Edition rulebooks, which quickly became our game of choice.  My second character was a Paladin, who would die on the Isle of Dread, sacrificing himself to save the life of my friend Ryan's Thief.  I would play in Chuck's games up through high school, returning during the summer of 1998 for a reunion game using characters that we had played for years.  To this day, some of my fondest memories as a D&D player come from sitting in Chuck's upstairs bedroom during an all-nighter, battling the minions of evil until the early hours of the morning.  

Chuck's red box would eventually make it into my hands, and I remember first running D&D sessions during the summer of 1991, overly-inspired by the blockbuster hit Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.  

Chuck was also my first player.  He gave me tips and pointers on how to run my own adventures, and over the years would share some of the materials he would amass from our local hobby store Allied Hobbies at the Oxford Valley Mall.  I was allowed to use his bookshelf as an occasional library, checking out a rulebook or copy of Dungeon Magazine to help further my craft.  

I will be forever grateful for that very first invite to join Chuck's D&D game.  

I've participated in countless tales told around a small table with a only handful of dice and a small stash of gnarled books and discarded soda cans.  I've met creative, thoughtful, and downright legendary game designers who have shared their own stories and experiences.  Most importantly, I've shared this storytelling art form with my children, and continue to watch them make it their own.  Hours upon hours of experiences and memories that would never exist if I hadn't rolled up one single, crappy, dagger-wielding Magic-User in Chuck's family's den.

So Chuck, just in case you're reading this, thank you.  

Thank you for bringing me into the fold twenty-five years ago, and for inspiring me to create my adventures.  I just have one question that remains after all these years...

... couldn't you let me start with a better spell than Ventriloquism?

Savage Worlds - Vampirates of Caribdus - Session 2

Kicking off the Plot Point Campaign

Last night we officially started the plot-point campaign for 50 Fathoms.  Although our second game of this new campaign, the first was a set-up, more or less, for allowing Accursed player characters to explore the seas of Caribdus.  In "Maiden Voyage," the first leg of the plot point campaign, player characters find themselves marooned on a wild and dangerous island beach and in search of a way back to civilization.  

For those unfamiliar with the term "plot point campaign" I should probably take a step back and give a little explanation.  There are quite a few scripted/episodic campaigns or adventure paths on the market.  In most of these, a game master runs an adventure, and then runs the next one after, perhaps with a short deviation or side-quest.  But typically the adventure arc has to be completed in sequence.  

While plot point campaigns may have a specific set of sequences, they are buried within a full sandbox setting.  Players can pick up a plot point, follow that adventure to completion, and then return to sailing around Caribdus, gaining fame or notoriety, and completing side-quests or even full-length "non-plot point" adventures.  There are also tables for random encounters that can occur at sea or on other specific parts of the map.

So part sandbox campaign, part ship-based hex-crawl, part Wing Commander: Privateer.  Choose your own favorite analogy.  

You may note that we had an additional crew member join our campaign last night, as my good friend (and long-time Savage Worlds fan of everything other than Necessary Evil) Melinda joined up.  You may also note that she is playing a "Masaquani", a race from 50 Fathoms instead of Accursed.  Melinda prepared a couple of characters for the campaign, Alara and an unnamed Shade.  After some discussion it made sense to introduce a character that had some kind of idea about Caribdus and the surrounding isles.  For our campaign, Alara can be the conduit between the monsters of Morden and this new realm.  

The Crew

• Nolan Lobachevski - Vargr Scout - played by +andrew lyon 
• Sobek - Ophidian Mariner - played by +Craig McCullough 
• Fenster - Golem Alchemist - played by +Frank German 
• Marie DeLahaye - Dhampir Witch - played by +Jeremy Land 
• Kor - Revenant Brute - played by +Marc Plourde 
• Alara - Masaquani Treasure Hunter - played by +Melinda Roberts 

Ship's Log

• Campaign Design
• Episode 1: A Captain's Barque

Episode 2:  Maiden Voyage

Summary

The five Accursed from Morden awaken on the shore of a tropical island, near a large piece of the Darkmaiden's Dance's broken deck.  Before they have time to completely get their bearings, a seven foot tall, blue haired masaquani (Alara) breaks free of the tree-line, rushing towards the water while being chased by three Yellow Tails (brightly colored velociraptors).  Hoping that she can shed some light on their situation, the monsters aid the woman.  Marie uses her fear magic to terrify the lizards, and Kor throws the ship's broken deck on top of one.  

After she calms down, Alara explains that her vessel, the Rebecca, sunk off the coast of this land, called Torath-ka, and she escaped on one of the ship's "skiffs".  Alara offers to take the monsters to her boat, but claimed that there was crying and chanting in the woods, and she can't leave any of her crewmates behind.  Before getting a promise of aid, Alara storms into the woods, rapier drawn.  The Accursed follow.  

In the jungle, the new "crew" finds the tracks of Ugaks, an intelligent but savage people that hate masaquani and humans.  Following the Ugak trail, the party arrives at a terrifying scene.  A single Ugak roasting the leg of a human sailor dying nearby.  Alara recognizes the sailor as Jasper Garibaldi from the Rebecca.  The lone Ugak is no match for the Accursed, who swoop in and slaughter the savage.  Alara tends Jasper's wounds and Fenster fashions the man a crutch.  Jasper claims that more of the Rebecca's crew are deep within the jungle along a nearby path.  

Alara convinces the Accursed to continue their heroic path towards saving her crew.  Two miles inland the entire team finds a massive pool of red, acidic tar, situated at the center of a stone ruin.  At one end of the ruin an Ugak shaman stands before a 20' tall statue of a Great Monkape.  Along the sides of the ruin are eight Ugak's chanting.  In front of the shaman are six captives from the Rebecca.  Before the party can do anything, the shaman pushes one of the captives into the acid, and the Great Monkape comes to life.

After a few moments of planning, the Accursed plus their new masaquani friend assault the ruin.  Fenster and Marie use their magic to pin down and terrify the Ugak warriors while Kor and Sobek slay the shaman.  Alara starts freeing the hostages while Nolan the vargr fends off the remaining Ugaks.  The main threat to the party is the Great Monkape, who can easily stand toe to toe with the mighty Kor.  Surrounded, however, the Monkape tries to flee until Sobek trips it up with his grappling hook.  Even on the ground the beast is a threat, and with a single swipe of its fist, the creature almost kills Sobek.  A sharp strike from Nolan's claw ends the Great Monkape's struggle.  



Notable Moments

• Alara had quite the exciting introduction to our campaign!  I brought Melinda's character into the game "in media res", before she could tell the group who she was playing.  All the player characters knew was that this tall blue haired woman was running with lizards following close behind.  Frank's played with Melinda before, so he had no problem teasing her that the rest of the group should attack the masaquani AND the lizards.  To add to Alara's situation, I made Melinda roll to make sure she wasn't hit by the piece of the boat that Kor threw at the Yellow Tails.  

• I'll say it now: Kor is a beast!  When attacking the lone Ugak, he did over thirty points of damage with his thrown anchor.  Those dice just kept exploding!  I declared that the Ugak's torso disappeared but his legs, arms, and head all hung suspended in air like a cartoon for just a moment.  The favor was returned lator when my Great Monkape did forty damage to Craig's character Sobek!

• During the scene where Alara patched Jasper's wounds and Fenster fashioned the man a crutch, Marie played a crucial part: lapping up the sailor's blood.  Jeremy's dhampir had no problem tasting some of the pool that was on the ground in front of the man, and almost had a bite of his open wound.  

• The brief synopsis does not reflect how much time was spent between the scene with Jasper and the ruin.  The players spent about fifteen minutes arguing about whether to help Alara with her friends, or just go to the masaquani's skiff and escape Torath-ka.  They went as far as having Nolan track Alara's footsteps in the jungle and on the beach.  But since this is an adventure game, the players eventually agreed to help Melinda's character be more heroic.

• We've played around with some new setting rules, and for this game I allowed player characters to cancel out GM bennies with their own bennies.  I need to read the Accursed rules again, but I think I should've been doing the same... but I didn't.  I don't know if we'll continue with this rule.  My Great Monkape lost an opportunity to soak damage due to a well timed benny.  Poor thing.  

Quotes

"What had fingers and toes and ended up in Kor's mouth?" - a GM's riddle.

"Now Craig, I'm going to caution you to not make assumptions here.  Just because these things are chasing her, doesn't mean they are the bad guys." - Frank had it out for Melinda's character right from the get go.

"Ah... eh... right.." - Marie frustrated at Alara heading back into the jungle.

"When we get to jungle?" - Kor asked while standing in the middle of the jungle.

"He's specialized in poo identification!" - Marc comment's on Andy's character's examination of the poo.

"That's just Kor.  He's... well he's not harmless, but he won't hurt you." - Marie sums up her cohort's strong points rather well.

"There you go dog-boy, you start lookin' for those tracks." - Fenster was so close to giving Nolan a treat.

"Jasper was the cook, which is ironic since he got skewered and eaten himself." - Melinda spent a benny to describe her former comrade.