Of Dorks

Negaverse Hit Squad

Negaverse Hit Squad
A G+ hangout game. First session approximately 18.5 hours from this post (scheduling can be bent around volunteers).
Your assignment: assassinate the evil Justice League of the Negaverse.
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Interested? Rules below:

We'll be using (Advanced) Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP, which you can download here.

Character generation is modified as follows:
100 pts total for attributes (FASERIP) including Popularity and Resources. (So spending 30 pts on Strength gets you a strength of 30.)
50 pts for powers. You can use the powers from the Ultimate Powers book if you like.

Skills:
You get d4 non-combat skills free.
More skills cost 10 pts per skill.
Martial Arts works differently than the book, though: basically it's 15 points (like karma points) you can add to any physical or psyche roll once each round and you can Slam or Stun anyone if you get that result. It costs 20 points.
You can also buy Super Martial Arts as a power (like Iron Fist) if you want a bigger pool of points than 15.

You can get more points to spend on any of this by choosing General Drawbacks or more points to spend on a specific power using Restrictions on Powers
General Drawbacks:

Age: below 18 or over 60 and it matters
+15 points

Fugitive
+15 pts

Irrational attraction to (person, place, thing, concept)--
+10 for minor (green feat to avoid)
+15 for major (yellow feat to avoid)
+25 for huge (red feat to avoid)

Irrational fear
+10 for minor
+15 for major
+25 for huge

Physical Handicap
+10 for minor (no sense of smell, trick knee)
+15 for major (hemophilia, wheelchair)
+25 for huge (blind, mute, missing a limb)

Insanity
+10 for minor
+15 for major
+25 for huge

Rage
+10 for minor
+15 for major
+25 for huge

Addiction
+10 for minor
+15 for major
+25 for huge

Strange Appearance:
+ 20

Vulnerability (a la Kryptonite)
+10 for minor
+15 for major
+25 for huge

Miscellaneous other drawback
+10-25 ask.

Restrictions On Powers:

Range: Touch
+15 for that power

Power always on that normally wouldn't always be
+15 for that power

Burns out on a white FEAT
+25 for that power

Power Restriction (doesn't work on yellow, etc.)
+5 for minor +15 for major +25 for big deal restriction

Other limitations you can think of 

+5 for that power
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Rules for HQ Construction, Spell Research and Miscellaneous Post-Creation Character Customization

1. Go to the list of locations here. There are one hundred.

2. Choose an entry. Or more than one.

3. Replace words. Any word (including names)--trade 1-for-1 and make sure the finished sentences are coherent. There is one other requirement: this is a place your character has been. They may have visited once, adventured there, been born there or whatever.  Feel free to invent anything that doesn't contradict your PC's established history. You can add a note about that to the description.

4. Send the altered text to me. You guys can overlap, it's not a big deal.

5. You'll receive one Renovation Point for each word you replace. These points are useful in getting things done quickly in Vornheim, Nornrik, or any other civilized and welcoming place you rest while you are flush with cash and the GM is in a generous mood (Special horse? New spell?). The system uses d20 rolls--so 10 points will get you a 50% chance of getting one thing done, 18 will get you a 90% chance of getting that thing done. You may spend a maximum of 18 points on any single task, but you can accumulate many more points than that if you have multiple things you'd like to get done.

6. You get 3 extra points if an entry you rewrite is interesting. 3 for each.

7. Changes to the PC and setting are subject to GM approval. The GM will tell you what's an acceptable change after you alter the text but before you choose to roll.

This is a special code for the GM: "Replace Us".

The Hardest Core RPG Theory Post

In every stupid RPG design argument the side that's wrong has a powerful irrational fear of A, B, C, or D. Usually D.

Which is dumb, because you need it. And sufficiently good B can overcome any unfortunate D. And without sufficiently good B, your game's fucked anyway.
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The Next Drama Student Who Yells "Huzzah!" At Me Gets Ended

fairy, maiden, fairy, witch

LOS ANGELES REN FEST REPORT

-Throwing axes is fun. Throwing knives: also fun. Connie is pretty good at throwing axes.

-You're always hoping it'll be all Warhammer but then it ends up being kinda more Fleetwood Mac.

-Bard class is heavily over-represented.

-Also out in force: busty women of 40-55 years of age telling bawdy jokes. There is apparently a powerful powerful urge among southern Californian white women aged 40-55 years to wear boob-on-a-platter corsets and say stuff that would turn RPGnet green.

-Not one juggler.

-Also: no D&Dables in craft alley. Not anywhere. Like you could buy soap, tiny spring-powered wooden catapults, a wooden box shaped like a Japanese novel, but no dice or little castles. The closest they had was a few mangled mantlepiece pewter fairies, some notebooks which were bound so old-tymey they wouldn't lay flat. I remember the one in Maryland being different and having all kinds of antiquarian weirdoes but maybe I'm imagining things.

-The best thing was the least Renaissance thing:

4 Cults Known To Be Active On The Northern Continent

The Cult of the Scarecrow believes that fear is the only gnosis.

Though they wear masks of burlap, their creed forbids them to build their own effigies or idols--they gather at night at the feet of scarecrows erected by unwitting farmers.

The Cult of the Scarred Coin lurks in many cities among the ranks of the deformed. It is said they worship chance and seek to pervert the law. Twins are sacred to them.

The Cult of the Black Manta is known both above and below the sea. It is said the Manta will devour the sun and dominate the earth. They teach the Gospel of Drowning.

They wear painted helmets carved from the skulls of sea animals.

The Cult of the God That Laughs is poorly understood, but it is by far the most dangerous. Its ranks are swelled by jugglers and lunatics.

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NPCities

Ok, maybe you can do something with this, right now I like it...

Let's pretend Immryr, capital of Melnibone, home of Elric, had stats. What would they be?

Strength: Melnibone isn't all that in terms of military might--it is on the decline. Still: they would put up some fight…. 6?

Intelligence: The libraries and scholarship of Immryr are world-class. No doubt. Perhaps none finer in the whole setting: 18.

Wisdom: How old and how spiritual is Immryr? Well very both, but maybe not the most ancient most hallowed place--that's probably some spooky ziggurat somewhere, so: 17.

Dexterity: I suggest a city's dexterity is its trade--and Immryr is in decline, but you can probably get most things there…13?

Constitution: How safe is Immryr? How much danger is it in? I'm gonna say a lot--Con 6.

Charisma: How beautiful is it? How much culture does it have? It is meant to be the most baroque and melancholically beautiful of cities, so….18.

Now let's look at the stats of its most famous inhabitant…

Pretty close to the city itself. (The stats in parenthesis are with Elric's sword.) People imply places. I bet The Shire's stats look a lot like Sam's and Lankhmar looks like the Mouser's.

Why bother to do this? Well truly decent tools for generating cities and places are thin on the ground and often require memorizing all new terms and ideas whereas NPC-generating tools are everywhere--why not parasitize them to make places as easy to handle as people? Describing cities as having the basic D&D stats lets you do all kinds of things, including:

-Make a random place on the fly using any NPC stats you might have lying around or a random NPC generator. (Roll 3d6 for each stat for Whatever Place Happens To Be Around The Corner, roll d20 for each stat for places that're supposed to be interesting by themselves.)

-Generate places of origin for your group's PCs using their own stats as a base. So if Gozar the dwarf has a high wisdom, you can, unless you've got a better idea, assume his hometown is a venerable temple city. You can grab some character sheets and start your campaign map with the places hidden inside these people. Thieves will tend to hail from trading (dextrous) cities, clerics from places with temples or long history, fighters from powerful nations, dwarves from stable (high Con) enclaves, etc.

-You can abstract questions people face in cities and settlements using the stats. Can anyone in Ghorsmakkia translate this? Roll the city's Int. Can you get Red Lotus powder? Roll Dex. Anybody got a problem they need solved? Roll Con and hope they fail (bad Con cities are fun cities). Is there any decent gambling? Roll Cha. Any magic healing? Roll Wis…etc.

-It also might work for organizations in general--guilds, cults, etc. A trade organization within a city could easily have a higher dex than the city itself.

Let's take a look at some places….

London

Str 15
Int 18
Wis 16-17 (it's not Babylon or Jerusalem, but it's spooky)
Con 14 (in Guy Ritchie movies) 6
Dex 17
Cha 16

The Shire

Str 4
Int 8 (they got, like folklore about badgers and stuff)
Wis 9
Con 18 (safe as houses)
Dex 8-12? (they don't seem to lack for goods despite being isolated)
Cha 13 (they have like festivals and whatnot)

Maybe "rural halfling village" stats get rolled on 4d6-pick the lowest 3?

Ptolus

Str 18
Int 18
Wis 18
Con 3
Dex 18
Cha 18

This shows the limits of the system: Ptolus is purposefully designed as the main city in the setting--so everything interesting is there. However…if you broke up Ptolus by neighborhood you might get a more interesting array of stats.

Lankhmar

Str 16
Int 17
Wis 16
Con 4
Dex 18
Cha 18

That's a little better--especially since refugees from Lankhmar can run off to Illthmar if they find themselves in need of that 10% of imaginable goods not available at home.

Place I just rolled up on 6d20:

Str 4
Int 18
Wis 18
Con 12
Dex 13
Cha 10

So clearly we have some kind of scholarly library or wizard tower built on an ancient site of power. It's usually safe despite having no political influence (Str 4) but once in a while there are raiders or the monks kill each other and it's not far off a main trade route. Nice.

Not sure if and how far this goes--(if you needed two armies to fight could you resolve it by giving each a class and making them first level and having them go at it? Tech level=armor class?)--but it's an idea.

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Make More Adventures Like 'Forgive Us' By Kelvin Green

Somebody sent me Kelvin Green's 'Forgive Us' in the mail. So I looked at it. Then I decided:

I got no problem with people putting out short, simple, unexotic modules with classic set-ups. I even have no problem with people charging money for them. But, new rule: if you do that, you have to do it at least as well as Kelvin has done it here.

There are two kinds of RPG things worth getting:

A-ones with good ideas you couldn't have thought of yourself (or at least didn't think of)

B-ones that do a lot of work for you so you can concentrate on other things

…and both of these things have a common enemy:

C-worthless stock-element junk that lards up the book and gets in the way of finding the good stuff.

Kelvin Green's Forgive Us is a fantastic example of an adventure with a whole lotta B and zero C.

The three adventures included have simple set-ups. So simple I'm guessing they started life as Call of Cthulhu adventures rather than D&D ones: investigate, investigate, investigate CLAWS.

And none are mind-bendingly exotic: in the third one you find out about bad people (with perhaps a red herring or two), in the second you go to a spooky town (with a spooky twist), and the first and main adventure is an Aliens-style horrorcrawl with a few complications*.

Here's a typical spread from Forgive Us:

I said "typical" and I meant it: every page has some kind of illustration. And these clean, open, hand-drawn birds-eye-view maps are all over the first and main adventure--along with tons of actually useful whitespace that you can write notes in and all over.

Yeah, this is totally the opposite of what I did in Vornheim--that thing had almost no room for notes (I was trying to cram the ideas in)--but for this kind of adventure, it's perfect. 

Because why? Because these are the kind of adventures you can turn into anything you want in about 10 minutes:
They work as D&D adventures, they also work as modern-era Call of Cthulhu adventures, and they could all be translated to sci-fi just as easily, the first and third could be super-hero adventures with barely any work. (The second one is pretty much a creepy Star Trek episode.) The first one could be set on a pirate ship with absolutely no trouble.

And the design and illustrations help you do that customization: tons of room to circle the lantern and put "full of poison spiders" or "dog pig-headed orphan". And the writing is efficient, crisp, conversational, assumes you know what you're doing and avoids pointless blathering. And it's all in that nice hand-sized LOTFP format instead of the unwieldy magazine-size people who write short adventures are still tryna get away with in 2014.

Most published modules are simple ideas with a lotta photoshop and fan-fiction shoved in to make it look like it's worth more money than the bare ideas inside. And frankly: fuck all of them for that--it's an obnoxious way to try to add value to something--turning the illustrator, designer and cartographer into, essentially, make-up artists putting lipstick on your housecat. Try to extract an idea from those and you get put to sleep by the text. Try to take notes and you run into another crammed-in paragraph of backstory or a photoshop border or a slick glossy page you can't write on.

Kelvin's done the opposite: he's taken set-ups anyone can use and spread them out so that a GM can easily get as much out of them as possible as quickly as possible and customize them without any muss or fuss. It's less a traditional module than something halfway between a module and a helpful notebook for writing your own module.

If you're gonna sell people a tool of convenience: make it fucking convenient. Nice job.

*SPOILER about what I like best about it (highlight to read):: What clinched this one for me as classic is the opposing NPC party. Fighting Aliens for treasure? Ok. Fighting Aliens for treasure through a well-designed, detailed tunnel complex? Better. Fighting Aliens for treasure through a well-designed, detailed tunnel complex with competing NPCs trying to do the same thing? So many cool things you could do with that.