Savage World of Athas: Monsters and Powers

Just puttering around with my Dark Sun conversion and decided to convert and post some of the more iconic monsters of the Dark Sun setting in Savage Worlds form. While I worked on that I noticed a lot of psionic powers/spells which are interesting and should certainly be converted but they don't have an easy Savage Worlds equivalent. So in addition to the monsters there are some new Savage Worlds powers inspired by the process. The powers on the monser entries marked with a * are new and are detailed at the end of the post.

Creepy Stuff

I'm getting ready to run a low-powered Dresden Files game which will hopefully include some good elements of horror and the bizarre. So I've been looking for good resources to spice things up and I figured I'd share what I found.

So if you need something to spark ideas for your own game or if you're just interested in some weird stuff then you should check out some of these places:

Black and WTF

If you haven't heard of this site it's a repository of strange black and white photos which range from the silly to the immensely creepy. Here's some good examples:

The Shadowlands

So long as you don't mind the mid-90's site design this website seems like a pretty useful collection of hauntings and spook stories throughout the US and beyond.

FreeSound

This doesn't have anything specifically to do with creepiness...but if you're running a game that features things like background noise or sound effects then this site is a great resource. Free sound clips of just about everything from gunfire to demonic screams.

Other Resources

Just some other suggestions for places to look for good, interesting material...

First, Mug Shot galleries. First and foremost you're probably not going to find a better collection of clear, diverse headshots out there. If you want to try and figure out what an NPC looks like just browse through any mugshot collection and you're bound to find someone who looks right. And of course they're great for finding people who look slightly crazy, if that's what you need. And since mugshots have been around quite a while you can easily find them for just about any recent decade to help set the mood for your game. Just make sure to trim out the police placard.

Also, find a local university or big college near where you want to set the game and do a quick google search with their name and "rare books collection". Just about every major university has one and they can have some pretty interesting specimens whether you're running a urban fantasy game or call of cthulhu.

This is awful

http://io9.com/5881462/publishers-destroy-scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-darks-amazing-artwork

I loved the art from the original scary stories books. Admittedly it's pretty messed up for kids...but look at me I'm hardly damaged at all. Hell, the art was what made those books interesting at all! Heck, it's the only reason I actually remember them and still own a set, otherwise it's just a collection of fairly forgettable ghost stories.

Don't get me wrong, the new art is far from terrible but it is not the nightmare fuel that the original was.

*Grumble* *grumble*

Gaming Thoughts: Cosmic Aspects

So my second group has just finished up our Keep on the Plaplands adventure and they've decided that they're interested in running a slightly more serious game in a modern setting, so we're gearing up to run the Dresden Files RPG. So I've been going through the book to familiarize myself with it. I've always found FATE to be an interesting system but this is the first time for me to actually play or run the system. Anyway, while I was going through the book I had some interesting thoughts. 

One of the central features of FATE is Aspects, these are player-determined character features which can be triggered by the player to receive a benefit or by the GM to inflict a penalty, appropriate to the nature of the aspect. For example, a character with an aspect like Big Guy could spend his fate points (the meta-currency of FATE) to get a bonus to things like punching folks, throwing their weight around, intimidating smaller folks or lifting heavy things. Likewise the GM could trigger the aspect to penalize the player for things like sneaking about, fitting through narrow spaces or being fast or graceful (this penalizes the player but gives them Fate Points). One of the possibilities presented in Dresden Files is the idea of "global" aspects that help flavor the themes of the entire campaign or scenario. 

So here's my idea...cosmic aspects that rather than representing running themes or events instead represent the influence of fate or cosmic forces represented by common forms of Divination, namely the Tarot Deck. 

 Basically here's how it works...first you decide how "long" these cosmic influences last. You might decide that you'll "refresh" the influences every session, or maybe it'll set the tone for an entire scenario or adventure. Or perhaps the forces operate based on in-game time...re-dealing the cards every month at the full moon or some similar system. Once that's decided then you can start:

The Simple RPG Tarot Spread:

First you get an Tarot deck (or simply use any of the many online digital tarot programs). You'll probably want to simplify things by sticking with just the Major Arcana but if you want to get really detailed then the Minor Arcana might be an option as well. To find a straightforward interpretation of the various cards with minimum mumbo jumbo on wikipedia: the Major and the Minor. 

Shuffle the deck and deal off the two top cards. These will be global aspects that apply to everyone in the game until new cards are dealt. The first card is always "upright" regardless of it's position when dealt, this card is the "Blessing". This means that the card's interpretation should always be looked at positively. The second card is always "reversed" and is the "Bane" and therefor is always interpreted in a negative manner. These cards apply to everyone in the game, PC and NPC but since the PCs are in many way the 'active' participants in the game then if you're not sure who the cards should affect then assume that it will favor (or curse for the Bane) the PCs. For instance, if the Blessing is the Emperor which represents organization, order, authority, leadership and so on. If both the PCs and the NPC are competing in a situation where the Emperor would be relevant (competing for a position or leading opposing forces against one another) then assume that the PC can invoke it for their own benefit (otherwise both might benefit equally and there would be no real effect). Likewise if the Bane could theoretically affect both PCs and NPCs at once assume that the PCs will be at the greater disadvantage. 

After establishing the Global cards then have each player draw a card from the deck. These cards will be either upright or reversed depending on their orientation when the player turns the card over and reveals it. These cards will set the individual player's "fortune" until the cards are re-dealt. 

So...mechanically how does all this work. In FATE these cards would essentially be aspects. Players may spend Fate Points to tag or invoke either of the Global card or their own cards for a reroll or a +2 bonus to their roll or it could be used to dictate plausible beneficial events or coincidences. Likewise the GM can offer the players Fate Points to invoke misfortunes upon them in the form of unpleasant events or spend his own Fate Points for his NPCs to benefit from the card in question. 

And one of the great things about Aspects if they're so very easy to work into other games. If you're playing Savage Worlds then perhaps players can spend a Benny to "invoke" one of these Aspects for either a beneficial event or a bonus (instead of the standard reroll) like a +1d4 to a roll. If you're playing PDQ then you can spend a Style Dice (or a Fortune Point or whatever) to get a bigger-than-normal bonus (like an upshift) or directly penalize an enemy (or vice versa in the case of NPCs). 

Even if you're playing a game that doesn't normally have meta-currency like Pathfinder or D+D then you can still perhaps invoke any of the cards for a reroll in an appropriate situation once per session per card. Likewise the GM could invoke a card against a PC once per session (either forcing them to reroll and taking the worst result or granting an opposing NPC a reroll). 

And obviously this isn't limited to the Tarot either. Read your character's horoscope at the start of the game or whatever your superstition of choice is.

Some Aberrant doodles by NJ

We've been getting into the Aberrant game and NJ is finally recovering enough to draw again (she had a sprained rib joint from an incompetent chiropractor) so she's been producing some doodles of her Aberrant character and mine. For context I'm the pretty one, she's playing the chubby guy who transforms into the giant monster. They fight crime!

Jimmy and Rubeto hang out
Jimmy and Rubeto hang out EVEN MORE
Rubeto's transformations

Bleeeuugh

So the last week has basically vanished from time. On Tuesday I came down with some kind of hideous stomach...thing. I don't know but all of a sudden it's the weekend. Now that nightmare is over I've been trying to get myself back on track mentally and physically.

So...for now just posting about some of the stuff I've been doing recently.

Gaming: The Order of Magnitude game is currently on hold while one of the players is off at cooking college. Currently I'm acting as a player for the first time in quite a while for a game of Aberrant. My Nova is Jimmy Budo a C-list martial arts movie extra and stuntman whose now-superhuman reflexes, toughness and strength have made him a superstar. He's also a moron, but still hilarious. I'm also running an off-and-on game for a group of total RPG newbies who've proved to be absolute naturals. The game is Questers of the Middle Realms using the Keep on the Plaplands adventure. I've also been recording these sessions so I'll probably post them soon as well along with the Order of Magnitude recordings.

Creative: Because one of the Order of Magnitude players proved to have a talent for funny voices me and NJ are planning to recruit him for a series of simple flash cartoons based on the Order's adventures. It should be most amusing.

Writing: Still doing some work on Battle Royale but things have slowed down a bit while I wait for NJ to recover. She'll be doing the art and since she's been unable to work recently it'll be a while till she's up for helping out again. Meanwhile DICE is still on the backburner while I am currently working on a new idea for a core RPG system called DRIVE.

Improving the World's Largest Dungeon: Region F cannot be salvaged.

So, when I originally created my new map of the WLD to give it a more linear, less sprawling layout I placed Region F after region B. F was the same "level range" as C and it fit the new layout a bit better. However, now that I'm done with Region B and I've been reading through Region F to try and work things out I've come to realize something...Region F cannot be saved and it must be deleted. 

This may seem extreme, after all both A and B were riddled with problems and I still managed to do something with them didn't I? Well, that's true...but the problems with Region F run much, much deeper. It's not a matter of tackling the issues room by room, in order to make F work I would have to basically rip it apart and start practically from scratch.For those who might want to hear me rant a bit here are my reasons:

The Warp Gates: Region F is called "The Maze" and that name certainly fits...it's full of minotaurs and it's got lots and lots of of twisting corridors and dead ends. But that wasn't enough for the designers, in addition to these standard difficulties they created a system of warp gates. Warp Gates look just like ordinary doors (except for extremely tiny symbols engraved on the doorjamb) but when you step through one it will lead you to another randomly chosen warpgate somewhere else in the dungeon. By itself that would be a pain...randomly popping the party all over a huge dungeon Region is going to be a nightmare both for the party and the DM. However there are two things that make it even worse...

   The first isn't immediately apparent because it's not part of the description of the Warp Gates found at the start of the region. But once you read each room description it tells you that once a creature passes through the door of a warp gate it will close behind them. First of all, this is pretty bad design because it doesn't address the obvious questions (what happens if someone tries to block the door or leap through before it closes for instance) but the biggest problem is that this automatically splits the party. If someone goes through they'll end up in a random location throughout the dungeon, the door will close and there's only a 1-in-10 chance that when it's re-opened it will lead to the same place. 

   If that wasn't bad enough there are side effects to using the warp gates. Anyone other than a Lawful Good character will be stricken by some unpleasant and random effect. These effects range from various status ailments (lasting anywhere from rounds to hours) up to permanent insanity, feeblemind, petrification or death. That's right, if you didn't roll up a Lawful Good character when you started this dungeon several regions back then you now have a 20% chance of being forced to save against a character-destroying effect. In fact, being killed is probably the best outcome...at least that can be fixed with a raise dead spell, something a cleric might get in a level or two. If you're hit by insanity the lowest level spell that can fix that is Heal...and since this region is supposedly rated for characters of 7th to 9th level there's not much chance of anyone being able to fix you anytime soon. 

   So let me give you an example...a party of 4 adventurers...a paladin, a rogue/bard, a cleric and a wizard...come into Region F via F22. They come across a door that's a warp gate. The rogue/bard checks for traps...he notices the runes on the door but is able to tell that it's not trapped (the gate doesn't count as a trap). The wizard detects magic and reads strong conjuration...but that's all he can tell. The paladin is impatient and volunteers to test the doorway...after all they've got to go somewhere. He steps through and is transported to room F43. He's not harmed at all but the gate closes behind him. Alarmed he turns around and opens his gate which has reset itself to room F62 with no sign of his companions. Meanwhile his companions open the door (which has reset to F90) and see no sign of the paladin. They're confused and call out through the door a few times but of course receive no answer (the paladin meanwhile is waiting to see if any of his companions appear in the room with him). Finally the bard gets frustrated and steps through the door, hoping to be transported to the paladin. He steps through and the door closes again...unfortunately he made the mistake of not making a LG character so he steps through and becomes exhausted (failing the DC 20 fortitude save). The door near the cleric and wizard has set itself to F23 and the bard's door now opens to F37. So now this group is scattered through three different parts of the dungeon, separated and only the paladin can actually step through any of the doors without risking death or status ailments. Any attempts to find each other will almost certainly lead to them being more lost than before or running into dangers on their own (for instance the paladin is only two doors down from the lair of an 8-headed cryohydra). 

The warp gates alone would be a good reason to toss this entire region into the trasheap but that's not the only problem. 

Wasted Space: On top of confusing layout and random teleporters-of-doom Region F is just mostly...nothing. A quick survey of the region shows at least sixty empty rooms. And I don't mean rooms that just are marked as "nothing here but bones and dust. Nothing of interest". I mean rooms that are not even marked at all, not given any sort of description or notation. For example if you come in from one of the southern doors of Region F you could wander through 8 or 10 rooms before you reach one that has a description. Empty rooms connect to empty rooms and it's all just so...dumb. I mean obviously not every room is going to be full of treasure or monsters...but at least give us some sort of idea what we're looking at when the party opens a door. Even if you've got to mark several rooms as identical. This is just sloppy unfinished work. 

  And of course those rooms that are not empty are going to probably be full of minotaurs. Minotaurs after minotaurs after minotaurs. If you thought Regions A and B were uncreative with their hordes of darkmantles and goblins then prepare to see the light because they're veritable thriving biospheres compared to F. Almost every single encounter in F is minotaurs...you could count the other encounters here on a d12. And the other creatures mostly just seem to be thrown in at random when the designers couldn't fit them into other parts of the dungeon. A cryohydra here, a sphinx over there, a raskshasa (massively overpowered at CR 12) and some harpies for good measure. This leads to the final problem. 

Bad Encounters/Bad Writing/Bad Editing: The endless hordes of minotaurs are not only painfully boring...but they're senseless as well. The minotaurs are all over the dungeon, which means that they're using the warp gates. Of course several are noted as having warpkeys which allow the gates to be set to specific locations...but these keys don't protect from the lethal side effects of the gates...why are there not petrified or insane minotaurs all over the dungeon? Like the other parts of the WLD the editing is atrocious...in addition to the bad encounter conditions there's a whole lot of incorrectly labeled CRs. And of course there's the ever-present question of just what is the purpose of this area? Randomly teleporting doors? If this is meant to be a prison why not just...I don't know...not allow your prisoners to wander the halls to be randomly teleported in the first place (And wouldn't having escaping demons teleported at random across the region make it harder to track them down and recapture them). Even if we assume that these teleporting doors are more reliably than locked doors why not have the teleporters just loop back into the prisoner's own cell so they can't ever escape? And why, why WHY are we punishing those who chose to make their heroes Neutral Good or Chaotic Good (or any variety of Non-good for that matter. Shouldn't that merit a warning at the start of the book?). Heck, not even all of the celestials were lawful good, and not even all of them were celestials (inevitables were part of the dungeon's construction as well). It's just painfully bad.

If Region F has taught me one thing it's to appreciate Regions A and B...hopefully the rest of the WLD looks better in comparison as well because F is depressingly bad. It is not worth the effort to save and it's staying in the garbage. 

I'll look over the map and see which region to swap out for F. Probably C or E depending on what seems to work the best.