Inspiration is everywhere: Day 6

OK, looking around for more inspiration! If I turn my head to the left, I see this little guy, who was a Christmas gift (or was it a birthday? I think it was Christmas) from my wife.

This is Beatbot, who is basically a speaker that you plug into your phone or other device and then songs come out of your robot. I can move his little arms around and he satisfies my fondness for retro skiffy things.

Very well, then! Let us explore Beatbot as an opponent! I feel like one of the things this project has taught me is that I'm out of practice statting up baddies for anything other than d20. I'll have to get on it; I'm out of practice with any system other than this as a GM -- or Stars Without Number, I guess. And I don't have the SWN bot rules because I have the old edition. Screw it, let's go for it anyway. Here's Beatbot for SWN, or more likely for Other Dust.

Beatbot

Created as a riot control and pacification tool by Earth's authorities, this autonomous system was nicknamed the "Beatbot" by those who had to suffer either the pounding of its armoured gauntlets or the devastating sonic attack it deployed. The beatbot hulks over a human, standing over 2 metres tall and weighing over half a tonne. Resilient, heavily armoured and hard to destroy, the beatbot is practically a mobile pillbox, although its movements are sluggish and lumbering.

Armour Class: 19
Hit Dice: 6
Attack Bonus: +1, +1
Damage: d6 each, gauntlets
No. Appearing: 1-3
Saving Throw: 14+
Movement: 20'
Morale 12

If the Beatbot has not moved or fired its sonic cannon in the previous round, it can launch a devastating sonic attack that affects biological targets through their inner ears. The attack covers a cone-shaped area, only about 2 metres wide in front of the bot, but nearly 10 metres wide at its maximum 40-metre range. Any target in the affected area must make a successful Physical Effect save or take d6+2 stun damage. Targets within 10 metres of the robot take a -1 penalty to the save; targets beyond 20 metres get a +1 bonus. Non-human life forms receive a further +2.

Inspiration is everywhere: Day 5

Today the heat and tiredness have just sapped my ability to think. I don't have any idea what to write about. But that's why we have a system, right? Let's go to the shelves. 

The gift of friend Chris (whose cool DIY Mass Effect costume blog you can find here), this copy of the infamous Simon Necronomicon is part of the overlap of my collection of occulty nonsense and my collection of Lovecraftiana. Its textual history has been covered in great detail by Dan Harms, but that's not what we care about. What we care about is whether there's anything in this load of goddamn nonsense that might be useful in a gaming context!

Behold its arcane majesty. 

I think there is a certain amount. Firstly, sometimes you just want to bash out a little occult ritual text or artwork and you don't give a hoot in hell for authenticity. When that happens, you can't go wrong with some of this book's high-falutin' pastichery (or cut-and-pastery as the case may be). Something like: 

Thee I invoke, Serpent of the Deep!

Thee I invoke, NINNGHIZHIDDA, Horned Serpent of the Deep!

Thee I invoke, Plumed Serpent of the Deep!

NINNGHIZHIDDA! 

You could give me twenty tries, and I'd never come up with Ninnghizhidda, Plumed and/or Horned Serpent of the Deep. And I like to think I'm good at names.

The Simon Necronomicon itself could also figure in games. Most games written by people who actually know anything about the field would die with shame rather than incorporate the Simon text (though I seem to recall that it does get mentioned in some Call of Cthulhu supplements, maybe?). But consider Unknown Armies, where magick tends to come from weird places. Alternatively, you could have a CoC tome (particularly in the Delta Green setting) that was written by some hack to capitalise on perceived Mythos weirdness but which nonetheless has magic properties.

Yeah, so our author -- let's call him Paul Lilak* -- is that fascinating mix of carnival barker, isolated weirdo and basic-model hippy that you get hanging around occult circles pretty much anywhere in the world. He mashes together some real-world mythology, some stuff he just made up, and some stuff ripped off from other sources. And through some combination of occult alchemy, even though the original materials didn't have magical powers, the mixture does.

So here's everyone ripping the piss out of Lilak, because everyone knows that his book is a load of bullshit, and he's getting increasingly crazy-furious, since he knows his crap works and that these magic-nerds aren't even bothering to try it. And serious occultists avoid it like the plague, so the only people even gaining the magic from the book are small-timers, lonely teenagers and dumbasses. That has potential.

(*I don't expect anyone to get this joke.)

Inspiration is everywhere: Day 4

As you may have noticed, a lot of my inspiration and resources come from charity shops, car boot sales and so on. Sometimes I'm not even there! When my wife is out looking for a bargain, she will also keep an eye out for anything I might like. This week she scored me a copy of Chew, Volume 1: Taster's Choice in a charity shop. In celebration of this generosity, I've decided to take this week's inspiration post from Chew!

Tony Chu, the main character, is a cibopath -- a psychic who gains impressions from eating things. If he eats an apple, he gets an impression of the sunshine, the tree, the place it was grown, pesticides, what have you. He is, for obvious reasons, a vegetarian. The world of Chew is one where chicken is outlawed, and Chu and his partner Mason Savoy hunt the big international chicken-smuggling rings. It is, as you might expect, not a wholly serious book. 

So the obvious thing to take away from Chew is cibopathy itself. Here then are three variations of the ability: a ritual for Unknown Armies, a spell for d20 (I don't have psychics in my game) and a psychic power for World of Darkness. 

It Tastes Like Murder, and Murder Tastes Pretty Fuckin' Good

Power: minor

Cost: 3 minor charges

Effect: For the next three hours, anything the caster eats will create a potent image in his or her mind of the item's origins and history. The images are vivid, as if the caster experienced them. Eating a meat product of any kind will therefore trigger a Rank 3 Violence check. Other experiences will trigger Stress Checks as appropriate. 

Ritual action: Draw a mystic sigil on an edible substance such as rice paper or cake frosting using your own blood. Cook the sigil using a specific mix of herbs and oils, then eat it. If any part of the sigil is left uneaten, the ritual doesn't function. 

Chew's Cantrip of Cibopathy

Level: Clr 4, Brd 4

Components: V, S, M

Casting time: 10 minutes

Range: Personal

Target: Object

Duration: Instantaneous

The caster must eat a small amount (at least a full mouthful) of an object in order to use Chow's Cantrip. The god Chew then grants the user a vision of the past or purpose of the object being consumed. The cleric may then ask a question about the history or function of the item, which the DM will answer in the form of a subjective, emotional impression. Multiple attempts at using this spell produce the same result each time. 

Material component: the object to be eaten.

Cibopathy (ESP, ***)

Cost: 1 Willpower

Pool: Wits+Composure or Wits+Crafts

Effect: Like Psychometry (Second Sight, p. 41), Cibopathy allows the psychic to perceive impressions attached to objects -- specifically, to edible ones. This usually takes the form of a general overview of the object's history, unless there is a particularly traumatic or emotional experience associated with it (for instance, eating the body of a murdered person would give an image of the killing). 

Dramatic Failure: the psychic receives a revolting, nauseating image of some disgusting part of the object's past. A successful Stamina+Composure roll prevents noisy vomiting. 

Failure: the cibopath receives no information from the object. 

Success: the psychic receives an impression of an important or emotionally charged part of the object's past. 

Exceptional success: the psychic experiences a sped-up vision of the object's "life" or history. 

Modifiers: 

+1: the object is food, cooked and prepared as such. 

0: the object is not prepared food, but is edible (a plant, an animal)

-2: the object is not digestible (dirt, a penny, paper)

Inspiration is everywhere: Day 3

I moved to another bookcase to look for further inspiration. These are the upstairs bookcases, which are just general nonfiction: 

They are a little disorganised at present, as you can see. Anyway, I came away with this: 

I am pleased that there is a Murder Club, but I don't think I want to be a member. 

What this contains is mostly contemporary newspaper accounts and so on, most of them horribly sensational. I flipped it open to the Cambridgeshire section and immediately saw this 1876 murder ballad (click to embiggen):

Now, most fantasy settings probably don't have the printing press, but if you're playing anything like WHFRP, you are missing a trick if your countryside isn't infested by hacks selling ballad sheets and crudely-printed chapbooks full of alarmist stuff about the Devil being abroad. These are exactly the kind of strolling dirtbag that should be part of any good grubby fantasy setting. They could tell stories of horrible murders, weird monsters, lost treasures and the sorts of things that get fantasy characters motivated. They might even choose to include your characters in their grubby hackwork. 

(Shoutout to Sven the Dwarf.)

Itinerant Ballad-Seller Ballad Table (D12)

1. More or less accurate account of fools seeking treasure in regional landmark being dismembered by horrible monsters. D6: 1-3 monster scariness overestimated, 4-5 underestimated, 6 grossly underestimated. 
2. Seemingly innocuous ballad which contains veiled references incomprehensible to outsiders but savagely insulting to inhabitants of next town over. 
3. Garbled retelling of something the PCs did which paints them as foes of villainy. May upset local villains. Bonus points if the PCs fucked it up in the first place (this is the "Town Called Jayne" variant). 
4. Garbled retelling of something the PCs did which paints them as bloody-handed reavers and advises locals to lock up their daughters, sons, livestock etc. 
5. Seemingly intricate collection of references is actually gibberish. 
6. Rousing good murder ballad beloved of local drunks. 
7. Ballad recounts legend of gruesome murder; ghost of hapless victim is attracted to sound of song retelling piteous end. 
8. Plagiarised copy of work by PCs or acquaintance. 
9. Ballad accusing actually innocent person of cruel murder; may contain clues to real identity of killer. 
10. Seditious ballad accusing local magnate of crimes. Possible trouble for those found carrying it. 
11. Pious ballad praising martyrs faithful to local god. 
12. Half-remembered retelling of ancient crime contains partial clues to location of treasure, invites hostility of thugs involved in local treasure-hunting industry if pursued. 

Tomorrow, I may watch some cartoons. 

Inspiration is everywhere: Day 2

OK, Day 2's inspiration comes from a book I picked up at a charity shop yesterday for less than £2. I read it many years ago, on the recommendation of wise gaming guy Kenneth Hite, who mentioned it in one of his Suppressed Transmission columns. It is Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, which it turns out you can also get on Kindle.

Larson's book is an account of two things happening in Chicago in 1893: the World's Fair, symbol of all bright and good about the future, and, er, a series of horrible murders by a guy named Herman Mudgett, better known as H. H. Holmes. Holmes murdered at least nine people and maybe many more. Not normally what you'd call "inspirational," you might say, but that's because you don't know about the

MURDER CASTLE

That's right, I said murder castle. I mean MURDER CASTLE. Holmes's, er, home was an elaborate, three-story hotel into which Holmes would lure guests, employees and others for the purposes of murdering them (and, in the case of his employees, claiming the insurance money -- pro tip: if your employer makes you take out a life insurance policy with him as the beneficiary, there is at least a 50% chance he is a murderer). The hotel was a labyrinth of windowless rooms, hidden elevators, and something called a "death shaft." Check it out:

Just to point out some highlights, then, that's: 

• "Mysterious room"
• "Secret room"
• "Dark room"
• "Hanging secret chamber"
• "Asphyxiation chamber"
• "Death shaft"
• "Room of the three corpses"

So, a complex, multi-storey residence full of secret rooms and death traps, ruled over by a madman whose reign of evil must be stopped, you say? 

I am eager to get my hands on the comic on the subject, part of the Treasury of Victorian Murder series, illustrated by Rick Geary!

It's got maps, it's got a crazy murderer, it's got a legit dungeon in the heart of a 19th century metropolis.

Holmes used to get different builders in for different stages of the constructions process. I like the idea of having the PCs return to the same location over a long period of time, but having construction so that the layout is different each time. 

Inspiration is everywhere: Day 1

Inspired by James Olchak, who has been designing Pathfinder (or similar d20 system) monsters based on old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I have decided to look around me to find inspiration for game material. Thus, each day for a bit I'm going to be looking around my house to see what sort of gaming inspiration I can find. 

I begin with one of the bookcases in the living room: 

My actual gaming books are behind the couch there, but above them are comics, comic history, occultism, science fiction scholarship and ... er ... "other."

I picked a book at random off the shelf and came up with: 

Awwww yis. A Showcase volume of Silver Age issues of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane. 

I don't know if you've read a lot of Silver Age Lois Lane and/or Jimmy Olsen stories, but they are absolutely demented. They're full of bizarre inventions, mean-spirited pranks, and Superman using her powers to teach Jimmy complicated lessons. Also the stories are typically only 8 pages long, so if you're looking to swipe individual ideas they're pretty good. And they're full of panels like this one: 

So here is a page of notes I jotted after just reading the first half or so of this phone book. 

• Superman shouts loud enough to shatter a glacier. 
• A gangster is called "Lab" Logan (another is called "Swag" Swanson). 
• A wealthy person will go to any lengths to protect a dog "worth a million dollars."
• A "glowing space-jewel" reverses people's attitudes, making Jimmy hate Superman. 
• "The Dutch Devil," a wrestler. 
• A doltish strongman interprets any positive treatment as an expression of love. 
• A remote tribe identifies Lois as their queen because of her costume party outfit. 
• Roughly 5% of the population looks exactly like Lois, Clark or Jimmy. 
• Some jagoff pays a debt -- an enormous amount of gold -- in a single giant gold block. 
• The most beautiful maiden in the land will only wed the man who impresses her with his outlandish boasting. 
• An eccentric professor advertises for volunteers to test his device. 
• A painting in an art gallery resembles a character. 

OK, let's zoom in on that last one. The story in question is "Lois Lane's Romeo!" from Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #10, by an unknown writer and artist Kurt Schaffenberger. The plot is dizzyingly complicated for an 8-page story. Here goes: 

• Lois catches the bride's bouquet at a friend's wedding, but is sad because Superman will never marry her. 
• She is assigned to cover a film festival in Rome with Clark, at which Superman will be guest of honour.
• Glamorous actress Gina Loretti is hosting. Lois gets jealous and doesn't go, instead sitting around the Trevi fountain with her tour guide Julio and looking at her own sad reflection in the water. It is the least crowded the Trevi has ever been. 
• Shortly after, she sees her own face in a painting in the window of an art gallery. She buys the picture and goes to meet the artist, led by Julio. 
• The artist exclaims that Lois is his dream girl, about whom he has been dreaming every night for years. 
• Lois and Dino (the artist) tour Italy as part of their whirlwind romance, with Superman following them. 
• Superman de-straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa after an earthquake has straightened it, fights a lion and (as Clark) dresses up as a Roman. 
• Lois passes by the art gallery and sees Julio giving the same spiel about an uncanny portrait to a completely different woman. 
• It turns out Dino and Julio are ginning up fake portraits of women coming off the plane, then running a scam on them until they find a rich one. Once they identify a rich girl, Dino will marry her to get her money and an American passport. 
• The other woman turns out to be Gina Loretti in disguise, because Clark set the whole thing up, having smelled fresh paint in Dino's studio using his super sense of smell. 
• Superman paints a portrait. 

And the bottom of the last page is ad space, too, so that is 7.5 pages. Things were different in the Silver Age. 

I think the core of the story in terms of what's worth swiping for a game is the art forgery thing. The hook of a PC turning up to a new location only to see their face in a painting is a good one. 

This has value in a fantasy setting (although a civilised one that has famous painters and so on would be best), especially because you can use it to play on the stereotype of the fantasy quest and the chosen one. "Oh, our temple paintings say that you are the one who will slay the Beast of Uzod Kroll," say the natives, who are 100% too chickenshit to do it themselves. If you don't want to convey to the players that following quests is for suckers, you could also have someone else be the mark; a dependent, or someone the players are supposed to protect. A patron could even be motivated to hire the PCs to do something dopey because this shyster is taking advantage of them via the old art switcheroo. 

In a modern game, it's probably more likely that some of the PCs will have the skills necessary to examine an art forgery, so the scam works a little better when the painting is somehow inaccessible, like in a museum, which in turn poses its own problems. In a game like Call of Cthulhu the painting should have an added sinister element -- say, the PC sees himself being murdered. 

In fact, you could set up a phony psychic angle, a la Heroes. The painter tells the person that they just paint their visions, thereby drawing them into some kind of scam where they can be robbed? 

I think the single shocking moment of seeing your own face in a painting is a good scenario hook. I'd use it in my D&D game except that I already have a mistaken-identity plot. 

Pieces of British gaming history, continued.

OK! Yesterday I talked about my recent yard sale acquisition of White Dwarf issue #4 and issue #6. There was good commentary in the, er, comments, placing these magazines in their historical context -- it's worth remembering that a lot of what seems like "oh, not this again," was actually pretty fresh and new in the late 70s, when D&D hadn't been out that long (and was even younger in the UK).

Without further ado, then, White Dwarf 6, for April/May 1978, six months before I was born.

What's interesting to me is that while I don't think this cover is as good as the last one, it is much more inspirational to me, gaming-wise. I like the weird, creature-like balloons, the caravan of weird animals, the ornate armour. It looks like a fun fight, set in a fun setting. 

As with the previous issue, we open with an editorial, this time announcing new refinements to the magazine -- justified text, new in this issue, and starting in #7, a colour cover. Oooh ... the big time!

Next up we have "Combat and Armour Class," by Roger Musson, another entry in the evergreen Armour Class Doesn't Make Any Goddamn Sense genre which attempts to create different types of armour class that apply to different types of attacks, not in a weapon vs armour type way but in a situational way. There are two really interesting things about this article to me: 

• AC continues to be a huge visualisation problem for players. They want to translate the rule into something that they can imagine happening, and similarly to express what they can imagine happening via the rules. Everyone understands that AC is an abstraction, but it's just too abstract for this dude -- and many other players, judging from the number of articles relating to this issue one runs into. I think Armour Class Doesn't Make Any Goddamn Sense is probably the second-most-common D&D rules fix/complaint, right after Spell Memorisation WTF. 
• The additional types of AC Musson proposes, "Target" and "Prone," are basically "Touch" and "Flatfooted."

"The Fiend Factory": Monsters! Many of them by Livingstone! The illustration for the Fiend is quite neat; the illustration for the Disenchanter is ... unconvincing. Ooh! Nilbogs!

"Archive Miniatures": A review of the imported American range, with particular attention to monsters suitable for D&D, including quite a nice umber hulk. I think it's interesting that the review refers to "Dragon Pass" figures suitable for "the world of White Bear and Red Moon," suggesting that the term "Glorantha" wasn't yet common currency. 

"A place in the wilderness" by Lewis Pulsipher is basically a chunk of wilderness setting that you can drop into your game, largely inspired by Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters. Let's Get Some Laser Guns Up Ins may be the third most common post-D&D article type, now that I think about it, and this definitely qualifies, with ultralethal future-tech weapons and some big-ass monsters to use them on. The art for this piece, by Polly Wilson, is choice.

It's got "murderer" in its name, for Pete's sake. 

Also, there is a monster in here called the Blue Horror. 

Reviews, reviews, reviews: Elric (the wargame) some miniatures, ooh! Wilderlands of High Fantasy. But the prize piece of the reviews is Don Turnbull's feature review of Traveller. And it is very interesting. 

Now, I've just mentioned the Let's Get Some Laser Guns Up Ins thread in writing about D&D, and I think it's indicative of the fact that many gamers wanted some SF in their games, and that, up to this point, there wasn't a whole lot of it about. Not none -- there was already Metamorphosis Alpha, obviously, as Turnbull points out, but I think this might be stretching the point. So Traveller is really the first big SF RPG, the first one to have a lot of traction. And this, to Turnbull's eye, is both a good thing and a problem. 

He's super complimentary about the books in the boxed set, but at the same time he expresses doubts about whether anyone will actually play it -- Turnbull thinks the game might be a shelf queen, praised by critics but not actually played. And why is that? There are a couple of points worth exploring here: 

• Turnbull thinks that there are not actually a lot of RPGs being played. People buy games -- EPT, T&T, what have you -- but they don't actually play them as games in themselves. Instead, they mine them for ideas or roll them wholesale into their D&D games. He suspects that very few non-D&D games get a lot of play other than as part of a D&D game. I wonder if he was right -- there wasn't yet a game to take the "thinking man's D&D" mantle like RuneQuest would, and there wasn't yet a lot of game presence in other genres. Indeed, Playing at the World suggests that the distinction between "D&D" and "roleplaying games as a genre" was very, very fuzzy in the game's early history. 
• Turnbull thinks that the game may just be too complex and time-consuming to play -- not because the system is difficult but because the setting is so large that generating it will be a right royal pain in the ass. Let me find the money quote. Here we are: 

Like MA [Metamorphosis Alpha], its scope is so vast that to play it thoroughly must approach a lifetime's experience. The referee's task is crucial here, for in both games it is virtually limitless ... the referee must populate a universe! Granted, the referee does not need to complete the entire ... universe before play can begin, but if the players are to have anything like reasonable freedom of action and choice [emphasis mine] the Traveller referee must do a good deal more pre-preparation than the D&D dungeonmaster, who can get by initially by creating two or three 'levels.'

Fascinating! What are we to make of it? I think it's very interesting to note that, like Pulsipher in No 4, Turnbull thinks that there are a lot of D&D games going in that don't have much of a setting -- just some scoundrels in a maze. And secondly, I think there's that emphasis on sandbox play. Since the players could hypothetically go anywhere and do anything, the ref has to be ready with at least a reasonable simulacrum of anything, whereas in D&D he or she has a reasonably good guess as to what the players' range of options are.

It made me wonder if increasing mechanical and setting complexity didn't go hand in hand with the decline of sandbox play as a concept? I'm not sure; I haven't really played Traveller, but I do think that games from the 80s tended to have settings that were much harder to just improvise. I don't know.

Anyway, it's fascinating, and of course Turnbull's dire predictions (which he goes back to in the last paragraph) were proven completely wrong. I should mention that I think this is a really good review. For me, the contextual discussion, wrong though it turned out to be, elevates it to much more than just your usual "here's what's in the box" piece.

There's a comic strip. Generic fantasy stuff needs an arresting visual presentation or else who cares? But perhaps people may not have felt this way 35 years ago.

"Treasure Chest" is full of crunchy bits: some new, complicated, magic items. One of them has four lines of doggerel on it. Then there's a system for giving XP for successful spellcasting. I'm sure someone can tell me why this is desirable. Then there's another hit location subsystem. I wonder how many hit location subsystems there are for D&D? I bet it's more than spell point systems, but on the other hand hit location subsystems are way easier to write.

The Classifieds are characteristically adorable. There's an ad for membership in the British Science Fiction Association ("Chairman: Arthur C. Clarke." Blimey!). 

I missed it from last issue, so check out this ad for Games Day.

Not what you'd get from GW marketing in this day and age, I'm sure you'll agree. 

Anyway, there you have it! I was really struck by just how stuffy and formal the language can sometimes sound. I would say it was an earlier era, but Dragon magazine was like this in 1991; like eating a great big bowl of sawdust. I wonder if perhaps most of the people writing for the magazine weren't really experienced writers? It's definitely a stylistic quirk that you get when people aren't really comfortable writing for publication -- they tend to go a bit serious as a way to compensate.

Again, I'm not sure there's anything in here I would really incorporate into a game (except maybe that mad-eyed Termagant), but it's all pretty fascinating.