Interesting Quote from Geoffrey MrKinney

I've been meaning to talk this quote by Geoffrey MrKinney for a while. It really characterizes the real appeal of Carcosa for me: low levels character can do cool things and still be low level buggers.

One of the things I wanted to do with Carcosa is make sure that the PCs don't have to wait till they achieve high levels to get the good stuff. In standard D&D, how long would it take for a magic-user to go from 1st to 18th level? Probably at least 5 years if you play every week. Probably at least 20 years if you play once a month. Some of us won't even be alive in 20 years. How sad to think that you won't get to experience a cool part of a game because you'll die of old age first.

But in Carcosa, every single ritual, every single item, and every single psionic power is usable by even 1st-level characters. The players never have to think, "Man, that's a cool ritual. Too bad I won't be able to use it until 2013 at the very earliest." Instead they can think, "I could use that ritual RIGHT NOW if I only had the necessary material components. Let's plan an expedition to get those ASAP!"

It was pretty bizarre for TSR back in 1980 to publish a 144-page book full of gods with combat stats, and then say, "But don't ever fight them." In Carcosa, everything with a stat is a totally legitimate foe. And even 1st-level PCs could conceivably take-out an Old One with the right planning, the right tools, and a good bit of luck. Conversely, even the most minor of Old Ones could eradicate a group of 20th-level PCs.

Nothing is off-limits on Carcosa. You can do low-level slogs. You can do megadungeons. You can do continent-spanning quests. You can go toe-to-toe with the Old Ones. Whatever. It is a world of dark and weird science-fantasy for you to do with as you please.

Now that's a game I want to play in and something I'd like to recreate in own games: a sense that 1st level characters can do anything - if they're clever enough about it. I don't need Cthulhu and the old ones, there's just too much baggage there I don't want to deal with, the same way I don't typically use bugbears, mind flayers, etc.

So here's what I'm thinking to twist some of these elements into a more traditional D&D game:

1. Never name the type creature your players encounter. Just describe it and let them figure out a name for it. Better yet, describe the creature in an a-typical way, too.

2. All magic items are rare with artifact-level enchantments and usually come with drawbacks. Better yet, there's no [easy] way accurately identify what magic items actually do.

3. Magic-Users can cast ANY spell they have found directly from their spell book provided they are about to acquire the correct components/have enough time/are in the correct location/etc. Memorizing such spells still remains within the realm of high level characters. Better yet, require a saving throw vs. magic or something horrible goes wrong when using spells as rituals.

4. Throw the concept of level appropriate encounters out the window. Characters encounter what they encounter when they encounter it. Dungeon level =/= character level.

5. Humans are scattered and alone. There are no vast empires, sprawling kingdoms, etc. Better yet, elves, dwarves, and other demi-humans don't exist and additional character races must be discovered during play.

There five ideas. Now it your turn. Show me what you can come up with.

After six sessions, and the seventh coming up tomorrow, I though it might be a good idea to start fleshing out the world beyond the Vats of Mazarin. There are a few things I knew about the world from the starts. 1) the Lycenian Empire once conquored great stretched of land. 2) Perithian and the Vats were in the jungle near the boarder of the known world.

The world that I drew up turned out to be much larger than I had expected. Originally, I had conceived that Lycenia would be a month's journey to the North of the Vats. Now, not only is it about a month to the north, but two months to the East by sea over the Orinthian Ocean.

The are only two major settlements near the Lycenian colony. One is an overseas Viking settlement to the Northwest, currently unnamed, and the kingdom of Kenet to the to East. For the most part the land to the south is inhabited by scattered tribes, archeological teams, and would-be foreign princes, none of which have any real, lasting influence on the colonists besides the constant threat of invasion and the ability to trade native for foreign goods (typically steel weapons for various vanity items).

There is also a group of islands to the North East known as Telepthos, which are inhabited by pirates, natives, and enormous building-sized lizards.

As of now, here is the basic map I've created (click to enlarge):

Vats of Mazarin - Sessions 5 & 6

In the last few week's there's been two more delves into the Vats of Mazarin. This post would be quite lengthy if I went into as much detail as I usually do, so I'll try to keep it brief.

Zak was finally able to join in with his attack poodle for both sessions and we had another new player in sessions 6, Cole, who played a Chaotic clown. Otherwise Brother Hoyle, Squallia,and Abaddor returned both nights.

By the end of session 6, the party has found just about everything of interest in the first level of the dungeon as well as the Observatory sub level. While no characters died, all of the party's henchmen and hirelings were killed, bludgeoned to death by giant crystal statues, zombie by cursed wine jugs, ripped apart by a tentacled horror that was summoned from a lower level by the magic-users in the white robes, or killed as the result of a crazy old mole man's demented wish in a magical fountain. Some of them were pretty close to meeting their ends (Blicxa being forced to cut off his hand, which was bitten by the cursed zombie).

Speaking of the magic-users in white robes. The group discovered they are part of a rival school to Mazarin's and have taken over the dungeon (or are trying to) in the hopes of stealing his secrets.

The last important thing of note is that a mirror was discovered that could be used as a gate to, what the party believes is, the red planet, blistering red sands rolling around on the other side. They recovered the mirror and set it up in their room at the in for later inspection.

Begining Characters As Blank Slates

I've been at my parents house for a few days before term starts and have been pondering a Mutant Future games.

As much as I like many of the concepts the game brings, I feel like it's just too much for me at times. The main reason is that I'm not so into non-human characters. Not sure why, but I've never really liked them. Many because me players (and myself) tend to play them as humans with funny faces and different powers, not like inhuman aliens with complete different outlooks. Mutant humans, while I like the concept, I would for prefer mutation to be gained during play instead of during character creation.

For me, newly created characters are blank slates. They don't have interesting histories and backgrounds. Maybe a couple words or a short phrase on concept, but that's all I'm really interested in. Ideally, all of the character's personality, legacy, and defining characteristics should arise out of play. Before the game begins the characters were nobodies. Background can be added during the game to explain all of the oddities generated by die rolls.

That way, the character experience the game world along with the players. I don't need to assume that the characters have certain knowledge about the game world that the character wouldn't be aware of.

I'm thinking now that a Bandits & Basilisks might just be exactly what I'm looking for. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

X-Plorers Psychic Characters

X-Plorers just feels like it needs an psionic class. Maybe it's just that whenever I think science fiction I think Firefly, but I feel it could just be a fun addition to  the game. Here's a rough draft of what I came up with:

Psychic (optional class)

Psychics are gifted with extremely rare cognitive abilities, the ability to see the future, move matter around with their mind, and delve in memories of other sentient creatures. The cause of which is unknown, but the result is extreme dangerous. When uncontrolled, these gifts may manifest absolute genius or insanity, often both. Psychics are often hunted down and captured by both private and government research agencies.

The psychic is an optional class in the sense that it does not universally fit into all settings. There are three basic ways to use this class: Allow Psychic characters as one would allow scientists or soldiers; remove it entirely from the game; or allow Psychic skills to be only accessed via multi-classing.

Mind Blast (Pre): A Psychic can create a surge of electrical energy in the mind of an opponent.  The damage dealt is 1d6 points plus the Psychic’s Presence bonus and temporary stuns the opponent for 1 round. Any creature brought to 0 hit points by a Mind Blast falls comatose for 1d6 hours instead of rolling on critical hit table.

Precognition (Pre): This is a Psychic’s ability to predict the future based on a specific choice, such as what would happen if the Psychic injected himself with an unknown substance or whether or not a rope bridge would snap when crossed. The precognition skill cannot discern long term long term consequences or even what would happen further than a few minutes into the future.

Telekinesis (Pre): A Psychic can move matter around with the raw mental force. The speed, mass, and distance an object can be moved is dependent on the Psychic’s level. The exact details of which are left up to the referee. A rough guideline if 20 pounds of force per level is appropriate, however. 

Telepathy (Pre): The ability to read minds, communicate through a telepathic connection, and even suggest curtain course action to another sentient creature or cause him forget vital information are all lumped under the telepathy skill. If the psychic is actually attempting to command or otherwise tamper with the memories or thoughts of another sentiment’s mind, the creature is allow a Presence saving throw to resist the Psychic’s influence.

X-plorers: Recap and Reaction

I played X-Plorers yesterday via google+ yesterday. Despite even two of the players down print copies of the rules, none of us had played the game before.

As I expected it was a lot of fun, but in some need to major tweaking. The adventure I set up was pretty simple: the party was on a transport between worlds taken hostage by drug-smuggling pirates. I had some nearby planets for them to explore as well, but we never got that far.

It's three in the morning right now, so I'm just going to give a basic run down of things I noticed from the game:

- Weapons deal a hell of a lot of damage compared to character hit points. A 3rd level character has only a 50% chance to survive the damage of a single lazer blast. No character, PC or NPC survived a single shot. Now, I don't shy away form character death, but this is too much even for me. I felt like I had to pull some strings to make sure the character had a fighting chance, like giving the party surprise in just about every combat (although, I should give most of the credit to the players' cunning plans). Having a character die in the first ten minutes of the game was pretty exciting though, I have to say. Poor Anthony (also a player in my Vats of Mazarin game) doesn't have great luck with his character's surviving, even with the critical hit table.

- The scout feels more like a infiltrator/criminal than a scout. No survival skills, but lost of sneaking around pocketing credit cards. It's almost as if the class if trying too hard to cover two archtypes and failing at both.

- 1st level characters don't have very good odds with their skills. Poor Will (also a Vats of Mazarin player) failed five piloting rolls during a space combat with two fighters. Not a single success.

- Pilots and, especially, Navigators doesn't really don't feel like they affect the outcome of space combat much. Gunners blow things up; Navigators can heal the ship. Pilots and Navigators can only grant +1 bonuses to the ships defenses or other characters' rolls. I guess the Pilot gets to move the ships around the board and can try to escape entirely. The Navigator, while useful, just doesn't seem like a very fun position to fill. I had a pretty in-depth discussion after the game with Mark, who seemed to share my sentiments. However, we both agreed that both the narrative and teamwork the system creates is excellent. All the guns are pointing in the right direction, but there's still a little tweaking that needs to be done, I reckon.

- The miscellaneous Agility/Intelligence/Physique/Presence saving throws worked out great! One of my favorite things about the game. Simple, but very clever. I especially likes Anthony trying to convince a crowed of cowering civilians to save his ass from an old fashioned shoot out with a rifleman. He failed (although they joined in and battered the pirate around a little bit after Sargent Stiles, Anthony's character, took him down).

That isn't to say X-Plorers doesn't get a lot of things right. Overall, I thought it would pretty fun. This is pretty much a list of things for me to fix up and tweak.

Character Level / Dungeon Level Conflicts

In my Vats of Mazarin game, I've been beginning to discover that character level seems to progress much faster than dungeon level. Now, the first level of my megadungeon is quite large, about 80 rooms, but even after exploring only 50 of them (although they've found all but two areas of interest), the party has reached 2nd and/or 3rd level. Maybe it's because the party is quite small and thus splits the experience only a few ways, but they seem to be stocking up on hirelings and henchmen. There have even been five character deaths and everyone is still progressing so quickly compared to the level of the dungeon they are on.

Part of the problem, is that I've made the dungeon too interesting. That might be the wrong word, but seem like the players are apprehensive about missing anything - they want to explore everything that there is to be explored and gleam every bit of knowledge out of it they can find.

I'm starting to appreciate more the Arnesoian three level system: Flunky, Hero, and Superhero. Different parts of the dungeon could geared towards the three character levels with each level of the dungeon being more of a thematic change that an increase in difficulty.


On a completely different note, I've begun to think more about X-Plorers. The Fight On! Random Tables book has some really great gonzo science-fiction related tables within and I'm just itching to get some use out of them. I have some definite issues with the game, rules wise, but who knows, it might play great even if I don't really get it on paper. I want to get some experience with it under my belt before I start house-ruling the crap out of it.