Dragons as dungeons and titan diving

My post at the House this week got a bit out of hand, trying to cover just a little too much. I did manage an approach to going inside the big kits, a look at character infection as a way to offset combat, and the idea of living delves and spaces.

But I had a lot more, so as a start on it, here are three related tables, for weird infections to replace more ordinary ones, for living landscapes, and for wargaming inside creatures.

Old Stuff Day - For the love of Spock

It's Old Stuff Day today, for bloggers to highlight a post or two deeper in the archive, that might not otherwise be seen.

Leonard Nimoy passing makes me feel mine could be this:

'The glad lightness of a far future and alterpluristemics'

The video also has Mr Nimoy giving some thoughts on the nature of Spock as a character, and clips from the episode.

Thanks to Miniature Musings of a Bear for the memory jog, and Rob at Warhammer 39,999 for setting it in motion four years ago, not to mention Nimoy for helping make old stuff like Trek some of the newest we've got, even decades later. Per The Secret Sun, where are the moon bases already?

The rot might have set in even while the original series was being prepared, if it is true it was Mariner-4 that rattled our confidence, showing us a Mars different than in the fiction.

And if you're a blogger, for any tabletop space, and want readers for newer posts too, maybe join the House.
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Rock-Paper-Scissors-Evolution

If you've been reading long enough you might well remember the old growing a tabletop posts. That's a thinking I've taken in other directions since, but this is a closely related idea, if a bit more general.

It's an underlying rock-paper-scissors system for this brave new world of rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. I've been thinking about statless rules, the tile-based tabletop game Hive and 40K's Tyranids.

How it works

The meta-part kit and character corporealisation

If you've followed the discussion on kitbashing at the House, now moving on to Lego, and the one at Tenkar's Tavern on using miniatures in roleplaying, you might be interested in the set of posts going up at Iron Mammoth's Studio showing a miniature being made up from scratch.

On the subject I have a question, and a thought about character creation, or generation.

Dragoncrawls and behavioural deployment

Still here. One of the posts I put up ahead of the lull was Dragons & Dungeons, on reversing the standard emphasis, and since then Red Orc and Jens D. have given the idea a bit more thought.

Suggested reading order would be the original post, Red Orc's follow-up then the latest.

I'm still wondering how it might work in wargaming. Maybe the forces would be set up based on likely unit activity, and the terrain simultaneously? Each force could be divided into a few categories, say Special, Scout, Column, Support and Patrol, which already happens to some degree in various games, with organisational charts, special rules etc.

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.

Deep thought Friday

Haven't done one of these in a quite a while now.

The background reading includes two posts from today: Trey's review of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the idea certain aspects suggest Farscape, and a post at Realms of Chirak on 'citogenesis', essentially a lack of care in recording knowledge.

What's the connection? Read this article at the IEET site on the idea of intelligence limiting itself.

The question then. Is intelligence an evolutionary dead end and what role does culture play in this?

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The Rule of the Jungle and the self-invasive species

This just squeaks in as my contribution to this month's Blog Carnival, hosted this time round at Hereticwerks with the theme Invasive Species.

It's partly inspired by the recent release of sixth seventh edition 40K and rerelease of past fifth editions of D&D, and maybe the latest report from GW, or some of the reaction to it. It's for tabletop gaming in general, so no specific system, a form of propluristemic content. It's an off-the-wall rule or regulation for more fully marketizing the gaming group.

In the wording of the rule, a gamer providing support is a Financier, but this could vary by setting: maybe Lender or Rentier for pseudomediaeval or historical settings, anything from Bloodsucker through Shareholder to Saviour for modern, depending on tone, and for an overblown grimmer and darker setting maybe Splitgripper, Souldealer or God-Enabler.

                                                                                                                              

The Rule of the Jungle

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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Weapon patterns, marks and mods, and the squearoll

This has been on the list a while. It was sparked off by a discussion on weapons in 40K at an old Outside the Box, but could work for all kinds of games using dice to resolve success and failure.

The starting point was the fact 40K is nearly 27 years old now, in which time a lot of the core weapons have been sculpted in various forms. Compare the original lasgun for the Imperial Guard - or Army as it was - and the Squats, cult etc. to more recent versions. In the real world, reflected in historical and modern wargaming, various modifications and variants also exist, and the same could well be true for other more fantastical settings.

Think about all the possible forms that slings, bows, crossbows etc. can or could take, let alone the range of melee weapons. This is true also for many if not all technologies in conventional science fiction, science fantasy and fantasy, possibly even innate abilities.

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...

Traveller, the epi-character and a very long game

First go read this. Epigenetics focuses on the idea of meaningful genetic change being passed down the generations by means other than DNA. Lamarckism is the supposedly discredited thinking that change to an organism in a single lifetime can also be inherited.

The article suggests that life has developed methods to transfer by reproduction not only genetic information, but even the experiences of the parents, a form of actual knowledge.

The significance of this is difficult to downplay, and the ramifications are going to keep people occupied for a long time. This is something traditionally fantastical, hard sci-fi at best. Before I come back to what this could really mean, a quick detour through gaming.

Expected inquisitors (1) - Inquisitor Badnut, Xenocog

A natural element of the 40K setting is the Inquisition, a kind of 41st millennium NKVD, or early KGB. Trouble is, inquisitors aren't always as weird as they could be given their reach and the wide-ranging role they have, and their recent codex isn't what we might have expected of any post-RT approach, or even a sixth edition version of the institution.

So this will be an occasional series just for inspiration, adapting some homebrew ideas for rules-light roleplaying to suit the mainstream wargame, but for no edition in particular.

Inquisitor Badnut, Xenocog

Struck by a shokk attack gun in the depths of Bea IV, Inquisitor Mercutio Rex found himself with all or part of a snotling literally on the brain. Initially believing himself possessed, but failing by apparently freak chance to take his own life, he came to accept his debilitating fate as the will of the Emperor and a gift in the struggle, refusing surgery and turning his training to communion with the creature. The ceaseless scratchings, whispers and roars have lent the inquisitor a knowledge of the Orkoid mind and allowed him in the years since to usurp the overlordship of multiple warbands, gaining great fame as a warboss while turning base greenskin drives to the work of the Emperor as well as Gork and Mork, for he acknowledges their power too, and invokes them. In the meantime reproductive spores have passed into Badnut's bloodstream and proven mutagenic, enhancing his constitution and improving his luck still further. His former colleagues are divided in their counsels. Is not the Ork a mighty ally? Perhaps by this means may the green tide finally be turned..? And all the while the spores which escape in his breath, perspiration and, yes, his foul soils sow the seeds of the Waaagh! in the very highest of imperial inner sancta...

Possible wargame rules, various editions: +1 T, but -2 Cl or -1 Ld; may take up to 75% Ork allies, or Orks as battle brothers, with Badnut and any retinue affected by the Waaagh!

I'll post more as I write them up. In the meantime, take a look at the grimdarkling detail project: Lasgunpacker has a massive 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 800 options to my relatively poor 400.

As for roleplaying 40K rules-light, you could start here, and there's a simple ruleset here.

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Up and at 'em = down and out?

Thanks to the film Gravity the Kessler syndrome is getting plenty of discussion at the moment. That's the idea that objects colliding in orbit could trigger a cascade, with the mass of debris produced potentially rendering spaceflight very hazardous, keeping us on the ground, grounded.

It's easy to imagine it used as a weapon, but for sci-fi and fantasy it could make for a strange new world - one not so far from the world we're in now.

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.

Review - Stalker

I don't do enough reviews these days so I've decided to post my thoughts on intriguing things as I find or revisit them. Anything relevant to the blog that seems worth looking at.

Here's a classic to start. Incredibly, John Till at Fate SF just posted his own review of it.

Stalker (1979)

A film adaptation of a Russian SF novel, Roadside Picnic; directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

One man leads two others into a mysterious, militarily quarantined Zone - an overgrown ruined landscape, possibly struck by a meteorite, possibly the site of an extraterrestrial stopover, a form of roadside picnic - hoping to reach a chamber believed to grant wishes.

This is one of the most old school D&D films I've seen, without being related to D&D in any overt way, and it has a rich, dense terrain that might surprise and inspire wargamers too. The central location - the landscape of the Zone - is arguably at the heart of the film.

Deep thought Friday

Resolving line of sight through areas like forest is a challenge in tabletop gaming. Trees? Or wood?

Heard of mycorrhizas? Turns out most plants are bonded at their root with a fungus, symbiotically. The fungus sends minerals up from the earth; the leaves send sugars down. Can these be divided?

We thought a tree was a tree - now we know it's more. But we still say 'tree', as if it's one, alone. How much interconnection does language hide..?
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Choose-your-own-annihilation and cheese with peas

Pegboard left an interesting comment at Faeit 212 yesterday. Here's the essential part:

Tzeentch book has a table on every page. You start by rolling a d6 per page number and comparing it to the table. Your army then takes that many hits. Your opponent gets that many models back. If you roll an even number, you go back a page, odd, forward a page, roll more dice and then your opponent gets the special rules haywire and feel no pain.

It's a joke of course, presumably aimed at GW and a certain thinking on randomness and fun, but there's a radically conservative idea in there. Wargaming and roleplaying have long used tables for resolution, but they've fallen out of favour in the mainstream even if a business model based on large books of rules hasn't. Games like DCC still get good mileage, and there are the funky system-neutral tables at the The Dungeon Dozen.

Imagine this: a choose-your-own-adventure-style book of tables for use at the table, for gaming without randomisers like dice, but with more potential effects and less linearity, at least as many outcomes as table entries. Choose your action, check for contexts and apply the results, maybe jump. But not Student's-t-like distributions: there could be nested tables, option trees and 2D or 3D charts, even close-the-eyes-and-point pictures.