Making bones about Nagash

The 'leak' is here for the new official miniature for Nagash, the necromancer in the Warhammer setting. It looks like a sleek, comfortably variable plastic kit, nipped and tucked neatly using CAD.

The previous one gets a lot of stick and seems widely regarded, online at least, as one of the worst ever Citadel miniatures. There's mention in this thread of the idea the skull was badly sculpted on purpose. If true, not badly enough for me. I've always been quite fond of the model, and I'd argue the skull's the key feature.

So this is an alternative perspective, a reappraisal for posterity, or possibly Midhammer.

From the Osteolix to the Inner Clumps

Underworld Lore #4 is coming this week, which means the Arcane Dwellings table needed to be done faster than expected, so I did the last nine myself, to be sure there are 30 ready to go.

If you want to add any, like Red Orc did with the Threshold of Eternity on Monday, go right ahead, and Greg can push that many of mine off the list.

At Offalmongers' Folly

I'm going to finish the Arcane Dwellings table at Gorgonmilk entry by entry. This is the first. If you want to jump in, no need even to ask: post here.

Here it is then, weird and maybe a little gross. If it's a mealtime, you might want to stop right now.

Digging the Gravelands

Have you seen this? While I was in stasis, Hereticwerks released a first shortform module, GL-1, Taglar's Tomb.

It's a revised and expanded take on a site they posted for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day last year. If you're a regular reader, you know what I think of Hw, and this is as accessibly weird and as dreamily expansive as ever.*

If you play a tabletop game, or like a speculative genre, you can probably do something with the contents. If you play a rules-light roleplaying game, like D&D or a game inspired by it, like S&W, you can probably do even more.

Even for wargaming, and not just for Oldhammer. For an unusual scenario, the tomb could be set in a hill in the centre of the field, with a scaled up version of the map on a side table and troops entering moving between. The objective would be to get in, hold the line while the diggers go to work and get out with more goods. Assign a tolerance to the surrounding slopes and walls, agree a rule for collapse and let the madness commence.

The trek with the guide could also work as a rolling road, with one side deploying hidden.

It's PWYW so you can get it for free and if you like it go back to pay what you think it's worth. They've also got a page of extra material, developing some of its vaguer elements.

As ever, check out their blog too, and Bujilli especially - he's got a big decision to make.
 
* As says André Breton via their sidebar: "Objects seen in dreams should be manufactured and put on sale."
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Near future wor*fare

When mum came back from the war her skin was on inside out and she was crapping through a hatch in her belly button. That was nothing. Last time she'd coughed her lungs up and if not for the nanopills we'd have needed to stuff them back in ourselves. Like we did with aunt Claire's. Hanging down her front like a forked bib they were. *Yeugh.*

We did laugh though.

But this time it was the baddies came off worse. She had a vid to play us and it was a case of your tote destruxor. She took out two bungalows and the playground beside the old folks home, and Mrs Moggins vaped the brick flats on Mill Street. They pulled everyone back when the 'topes came in.

'Topes? No snopes. We never opened the windows anyway these days, what with the smell from next door. All just piled up out there they were. Good neighbours. Plain bad luck...

Bzzz...

Zone-age Rumours (1d30)

If you've read Roadside Picnic or seen Stalker, you know how inspirational they can be.

John at Fate SF is running a creative project, open to all: add a Zone-inspired work to the gaming canon, for any system. Just write it up and post - maybe using the funky image by Hereticwerks up top - and leave the link at John's, to go into the master table.

Here's my starting point, for narrative skirmish and tactical roleplaying especially: a d30 table of rumours from a Zone-struck world, for some context and large-scale campaign seeds. Feed them into a weird, modern or near-future setting or use them for inspiration.

What scares the snakes and spiders?

Dogs aren't so fond of fireworks - quite a few might panic tonight in the UK. But some of them have been bred and trained to hunt with human masters, and accept their physics.

Beware of scrolling below this point unless you are an adult who is willing to be discomforted, possibly offended, and scared. There will be spoilers for Alien too.

Cthulhu waits dreaming... of Cthulhette?

Go read this. It's light on detail for a science bit, but oddly Cthulhic. There's more on midshipmen here - look at the relationships to our physiology.

A few passages for the essence of the thing:

A mysterious hum has been keeping people in Hampshire awake all night ...

...

Male Midshipman fish let out a deep, resonating drone which attracts females and acts as a challenge to other males. ... once they get going can keep up the distracting hum all night. 

... the noise created by the Midshipman is of such a low frequency and long wavelength that it can carry through the ground, walls ...

...

... "I thought I was going mad at first. ..."

The question then: what else might be disturbing our sleep we don't yet know about..?
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Noircana - a campaign toolkit?

Imagine a world where magic bleeds out raw, and infuses all within. Where arcane is mundane and lines between living and dead thin. A civilisation of sorcerers all the way up, from the newborn to gods that pass unseen, a landscape gone mad, and now MAD - with Mutual Assured Destruction.

Conventions, contracts and pacts abound, but out where the rules don't apply there's radicalism and exponential growth. Ever more subtle forms of power and means to exercise it. Mysteries in mysteries, but faint trails back to puppeteers for any who dare look, and know how - or can learn.

A world where wealth is redefined and anything really will be possible. If it isn't already...

This is one possible take on a project JD and I have been talking about here at his blog, The Disoriented Ranger. It's essentially a themed toolkit for tactical roleplaying*, but could also go beyond, into other game types too: imagine a wargame where units are unnecessary and battles fought with arcane power only, but orders of magnitude greater.

It started with JD's subsystem for personal magic weapons and my mind still on Read Magic. One of the major ideas we've been discussing is the near-universal magic item, formed naturally, and the concept of a magical signature unique to a particular source, and linked with that the idea of casters having a magical fingerprint and leaving it behind.

Not a noircrawl so much as a noircana to deepen a campaign, building on lesser-used spells like Detect Magic and maybe leading to whole new sets like those in Space-Age Sorcery. It plays to dark classics, but also more recent reference points like The Matrix and the so-called singularity. Hereticwerks and others already work with material like it.

200 grimdarkling personal features, minor mutations, gifts, devices, body mods and stylings (arms /1,000)

Yet more entries for the character detail project, which is an open project to produce a large range of options for figures in a grimdarkling world like 40K's. The whole thing was set off a couple of weeks back by Lasgunpacker's random warband creator for Inquisitor.

Since my last batch, Lasgunpacker has posted 200 each for bling and equipment, to make 700. With zhu bajiee's 60 minor mutations and my first batch we have around 950.

This is my next batch of 200 then, this time for the arms, which gets us to around 1,150.

If you don't have a d20 and/or d10, just roll 1d6: on a 1-3, roll for 1-100 as described in the fifth paragraph here; on a 4-6 roll for 101-200 the same way, adding 100 to the result.

To decide which arm it is, assuming two, roll 1d6: on a 1-3 it's the left, on a 4-6 the right.

Beware: there's some weirdness, a fairy tale-bad dream darkness and light body horror.
 

Casting on weird frequencies

This caught me napping: out from under the transplanar radar throbs Space-Age Sorcery - a free pdf resource.

It's a collaboration between Hereticwerks and Needles at Swords & Stitchery, with me along for the ride. The pdf has over 100 'spells', weird ones blurring the line people keep seeing between sci-fi and fantasy, with whole sacs of horror thrown in. There's a quick note on the tone here.

You should be able to plug them all fairly easily into your old school tactical roleplaying game, but if you don't have one of those yet, you could use the simple ruleset here.

Go download one, and show your appreciation to Hereticwerks and Needles if you like it.

Update: Just uploaded is Version 1.5, with enough tweaked to make it worth switching.

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200 grimdarkling personal features, minor mutations, gifts, devices, body mods and stylings (head, /1000)

More entries for the character detail project, for individuals in a grimdarkling world like 40K's, set in motion last week by Lasgunpacker's random warband creator for Inquisitor.

Since my first batch, Lasgunpacker has posted 100 each for bionics, weapons and clothing. With zhu bajiee's 60 minor mutations that gets us to about 450 non-duplicates.

We're running parallel tables, aiming for 1,000 each to start and avoiding any overlap as far as possible, with the idea of combining them later. If anyone wants to join in, they're very welcome. Lasgunpacker's plan is here and I'm provisionally thinking the following:

• 200 for the head, including the face and neck

• 200 for the arms, including the shoulders and hands

• 200 for the thorax, i.e. the chest and upper back

• 200 for the abdomen, i.e. the belly and lower back

• 200 for the legs, including the feet

So here's the second 100 for the head, combined with the first 100 to make a list of 200.

If you don't have a d20 and/or d10, just roll 1d6: on a 1-3, roll for 1-100 as described in the fifth paragraph here; on a 4-6 roll for 101-200 the same way, adding 100 to the result.

Beware: there's some weirdness, a fairy tale-bad dream darkness and light body horror.
 

100 grimdarkling personal features, minor mutations, gifts, devices, body mods and stylings (head, /1000)

I may not be fond of using tables in play, especially in tactical roleplaying, but I still like big, baroque tables, most of all for prep. This is a fairly big one, and baroque in content.

It was inspired by Lasgunpacker's random warband generator for Inquisitor and the idea of crowdsourcing a d1000 table, but helped along by the recent musing re John Blanche.

Put simply, Inquisitor is a 'narrative wargame' published by Games Workshop in 2001, a blend of skirmish game and RPG set in the 41st millennium. Officially it uses 54mm miniatures, but actual play looks to be heavily 28mm (see INQ28). Inquisitor may be the loftiest crag in GW's modern history, the magical moment when it all came together and the nature of the drop became clear. But that's an argument for another day.

I'm game for a d1000 table whether or not anyone else is, and this is a first 100 entries, for the head only. They're personal features, minor mutations, gifts, devices, body mods and stylings for characters in a grimdarkling world - like 40K's - but system-free. They assume a human, or standard humanoid at least, but the list shouldn't be hard to adapt.

It's a d100 table, which usually means rolling 1d10 twice, once for the tens and once for the units. If you don't have a d10 but have a d6, you can use the method described here.

Beware: there's some weirdness, a fairy tale-bad dream darkness and light body horror.
 

Arriving at the Abode of Departure

If you haven't seen it already, you might like what John Till did with that simple architect builder I posted the other day. He's developed his desert fortress-town - the remote Abode of Departure.

The introduction is here, the fuller overview here.

It's an eerily evocative location and I realise now that with the deep cistern network, hidden structures and gate, and stomach-churning fate that could well be waiting, it's potentially a campaign setting in itself. I don't know if I'd rather run it or be run through it, which is a possible measure of something just right.

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A simple architect builder

The machineries didn't get going so I missed the deadline for that Hill Cantons stronghold contest.

As a form of compensation, and an outlet for my interest in it, here's an architect builder, for when your character needs to know who's available to build a stronghold, or who they've gone and hired.

It's aimed at rules-light roleplaying, but it could also be used to inspire modelled terrain pieces for wargaming: did battle ruin all those buildings?

Old school tactical roleplaying - a simple core ruleset

It may be the best time since the mid-1980s to start playing in the expansive style of the early tactical RPGs, and a new golden age for production and play.

That said, there are still barriers to entry. The range of rulesets, supplements and ideas emerging from the OSR and beyond can be overwhelming, and references to past work and debates on fine points can be confusing and may be discouraging potential players.

This post is an attempt to offer a simple starting point. Purists may dislike it, but it may help the interested potential player grasp the whole and grow the hobby. It's not a full system, more a distillation of themes and a generalisation for the early leaps. I'm using a similar approach with a drop-in campaign at a local game store and it's helping no end.

All we really need to know to get playing is how to create characters, how to explore, how to perform actions and how to resolve encounters, so that's what this will cover.

Wired-up Fighting Fantasy Necromunda in Itra's City

Of all the games you've known or loved, what fine fusions would you make if you could?

I wouldn't mind exploring the early version of Necromunda from GW's Confrontation, but in the form of a networked Fighting Fantasy gamebook that's still a paperback, borrowed from a local library - with dust, stains and the pencil marks of past players - using the resolution system from the Norwegian RPG Itras By, and all on a rainy British afternoon.

Here's some of the rich setting material, although Itras By would encourage reworking it.

Hive clusters are connected together by roads across the [ash] wastes and transportation tubes supported on pylons and suspended from cables. ... the landscape resembles a petrified forest entangled in the web of some enormous spider. ...

...

... The ash occurs in many different, often vivid hues such as sulphur yellow, citric green, cobalt blue, pink, mauve, as well as various shades of grey, and it varies in texture from fine dust to crystalline clinker. The creatures and nomads that live there are equally colourful ...

... A moderate ash storm will strip an unprotected man to the bone in seconds, and then reduce his bones to a handful of dust. ... Imperial scholars who have studied dust ecologies believe that there may be currents and tides within the ash surface.

...

In hotter weather, when Necromunda’s sun breaks through the planet’s cloud cover, noxious vapors rise up and form poisonous mists and fogs. Mists are invariably followed by toxic rain storms, laden with particles of deadly ash dust and other contaminants.

White Dwarf No. 130 (October 1990)

The aspects are all there, in the intricate lived-in tone and weirdness. I'm actually looking for a gaming equivalent to this video, a soulful blend of individually outstanding material...

The major sources used, or a close and relevant match otherwise, are this ("Silent All These Years"), this ("Down by the Water"), this ("Cover Me") and this ("Dissolved Girl").

If you're wondering how the metaphor shifted, it probably passed at least partly through the prism of Tadeusz Różewicz's "Draft for a Modern Love Poem", especially the lines:

...

a spring-clear
transparent description
of water
is a description of thirst
ashes
desert
it produces a mirage
clouds and trees move into
the mirror

Lack hunger
absence
of flesh
is a description of love
is a modern love poem

Gaming can also be seen as a kind of ensemble musicmaking, even lovemaking, with a good metre, a few riffs and plenty of flights of fancy, all kept developing with gentle cues.

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Using your braners (1) - World-changing weaponry

I want to show more of the scope in the braner concept, so this is the first in a series on possible applications for gaming and in wider fiction. It's propluristemic content, meaning it's designed for use in no particular game system or setting, for adaptation as preferred.

I recommend reading the last post first, and maybe this one, to find out what a braner is.

The idea is that part of a transdimensional structure - whether a lode of a weird material, or a daemon, or something else - is coaxed, driven or worked into a device of some kind.

The two here are melee or projectile weapons, and the entity is assumed to be the edge of the blade, or the surface making contact. This also suggests the sheath or equivalent is worked to contain the effect, or a variation on the weaver aspect is used to activate it.

Each one has a few possible names, to reflect the variety of worlds that could develop it.

Vault's Call, Sibilance, The Exsanctor etc.

This weapon cleaves solid matter cleanly, as if liquid, apparently destroying all material along the path. In fact, each particle is drawn over a dimensional boundary (cf. whisker).

The weapon may cut through a barrier of any nature except transdimensional. In combat a hit ignores all armour and fields with this same exception. The hit is always treated as critical or does critical or maximum damage, and will otherwise cause immediate death.

If left unsheathed, the transdimensional part will pass through matter on which it rests or which it strikes, and it will continuously draw in particles from a surrounding atmosphere or reservoir until this is exhausted - to which myriad dead worlds and voids may testify.

The constant whisper of this flow may be heard, and the space beyond may be sensed.

Wail o' the Weft, Shreave, The Disenverter etc.

This weapon warps the current reality, removing or remaking existing matter and infusing it with strange forms from unknown sources beyond dimensional boundaries (cf. winder).

In combat a hit ignores all armour and fields except those of a transdimensional nature and is treated as if coated with a permanently debilitatingly poison, while the maximum damage result causes immediate death. Each hit results in a single mutation over time.

In each situation in which the weapon is unsheathed, that location or route is corrupted and may bleed; any entity later touching this point or line is treated as if hit. Where this weapon proliferates, the world may quickly become unrecognisable, even uninhabitable.

When in motion the weapon emits a shriek and ripples may be felt in the fabric of reality.

Hopefully this does make the possible uses clearer, or helps point a way. The last post has more context, and once you can visualise what's going on, the ideas should flow...

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Build-your-own braner

Last week I posted a weird new monster, alien or supernatural being that references M-theory - the noö-braner. If you missed it, the basic braner is essentially a trans-Euclidean lifeform able to slip more or less freely across various dimensions.

It could be the basis of a Lovecraftian horror, or an alternative to a warp entity for 40K, or a very different tactical challenge for adventurers and armies, the kind of thing you might find in Call of Cthulhu, sword and sorcery or a wargame like this, maybe a demiurge...

The original post has a few more suggestions too, thanks to John Till and garrisonjames.

I want to generalise the concept through a simple tool, so below is a table for six general braner aspects for mixing and matching. The noö-braner is now a 'waker-weaver-wisher'.

A random approach to making your own could be rolling 1d6 for the number of aspects it has and 1d6 on the table for each, treating duplicates as greater intensity in that aspect.

      Braner aspects (1d6)

1. Waker - The osmotic or conductive structure of this braner allows the absorption, mingling or transfer of material among those regions currently located adjacent to it, enabling the formation of a reservoir or conduit for transdimensional interaction.
2. Weaver - Highly elongated or filamentary, this braner binds manifolds, perhaps forming a basis for a reality by bracing its fundamental particles, macrostructures or universal shell; its loss, transformation or relocation may lead to local collapse.
3. Whiler - Whether hibernating, pupating or paralysed, perhaps lying in wait, this braner is more or less inactive, representing a temporary hindrance to travel via the region and gifting its current transdimensional location a misleading stability.
4. Whisker - This braner hooks, envelops or dislodges elements of nearby regions, stretching or carrying them out across a dimensional horizon, perhaps shifting, telescoping or inverting the local form; they may be returned, irrevocably altered.
5. Winder - The tension, mass or construction of this braner warps the coils of the dimensions it spans or crosses, thereby spontaneously reordering, separating or fusing these dimensions and sparking sudden shifts in reality for the inhabitants.
6. Wisher - Possessed of a morphic structure - perhaps plasmatic, gelatinous or nanitic - or capable of transdimensional lensing, this braner is able to generate, modify or mimic any or all of the elements of a region, including the inhabitants.

They're building blocks only of course, for you to decide the wider nature and the detail of the manifestations. For general mechanics, assuming they'd apply, you could look at the ideas in the first post. For less usual contexts, the possible new genres might be a good start, especially body noir, glossed world, retro time travel and sword and reinette.
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Noö-braner

This post at False Machine reminded me of noisms' recent suggestion that "Creating a truly new monster is difficult, and perhaps impossible". I thought I might have a go at it.

A noö-braner is a trans-Euclidean being able to bleed freely across any and all dimensions in pursuit of hylozoa. It tracks likely targets from dimensions largely beyond their own, initially inserting only quanta to scan, later perhaps more complex observational and manipulative tendrils from multiple points. Having identified a potential node, a noö-braner strikes from within, either endowing an awareness which extends via the noö-braner and all existing nodes, or altering awareness if a similar being has already entered.

It's a lifeform Mr Lovecraft might recognise, or possibly a distant cousin of GW's Umbra.

It doesn't seem to need stats, and could be best used to bring elements of a landscape to life, to modify mental and spiritual attributes, or psychic or magical ability, or to allow lifeforms to draw on deeper resources. Individuals and units with a heightened sense or advanced sensors could be allowed a check to observe those tendrils before the strike.

For wargaming, you could look at the 'compromised' idea from the GM substitute deck.

For tactical roleplaying, a noö-braner has no real lair, its treasure is the awareness - but could be the recognition of the awareness - and lots of rumours are already out there...

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