Happy Halloween! Headless Horseman for Shadowdark

State of the Planes: October 2023

This year just seems to have flown by and All Hallow's Eve is nearly upon us. I've been playing a Fighter named Bluehawk using the Unearthed Arcana playtest version and am enjoying it. I'm a bit tired of 5E though and if the group wants to continue with it after this campaign wraps I might excuse myself for a bit. I love seeing all of my friends but they still seem very enthused about 5E and I am just not.

I'm still taking a break from Deadlands on Tuesdays and we are beginning an Icons game set in the DC...uh...Multiverse...I guess? The PCs are working for Power Co. in Opal City and are dealing with a new version of HIVE led by Cheshire.

I've spent the last few months looking at games I want to run such as Shadowdark, Dragonbane, Basic Role Playing, Hero's Journey, Castle Falkenstein, Fantasy AGE, Hero System 6E, and even Pathfinder 2E. I think whatever I run it won't have a d20 in it. I love the OSR and still love 5E, even though I despise Wizards of the Coast, but I just need some time away from both of them. I think I'm going to focus on Savage Worlds since my biggest grip against it was the Wound system which is no longer the case and I really like a bunch of its settings: Deadlands, Battlelords of the 23rd Century, Rippers Resurrected, 50 Fathoms, Saga of Solomon Kane, Flash Gordon, Pathfinder, and Lankhmar. I'm contemplating a setting like Rifts Earth (though I don't want to run SW Rifts yet), Deadland's Hunting Grounds...something where people from all over find themselves in the same place or the setting just makes room for all of them like Numenera's 9th World a billion years in the future but without the Cyphers.. Basically, I'd just lay out all of the Seasoned Archetypes for SWADE and let people pick their characters. I love what Pinnacle is doing with the Archetype, Powers, Chase, Status, and Ally/Adversary cards. I also have a Rippers Resurrected mixed with Ravenloft's Masque of the Red Death game in mind but when don't I have a million ideas? So little time. Sigh.

I'd like to do some "OSR stuff" for Savage Worlds like I started with Death's Head Keep earlier this year but I'm going to be realistic and see what happens. I don't think I just want to make antagonists and might focus on setting material and even side quests.

I guess we will see what November and December hold.

Be well.

Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP: Additional Damage Revised

I've revised my FASERIP Damage Bonus originally posted here. 

If the roll of a d10 is even you gain a +1 Column Shift per die and if your roll is a double and a success you gain +3 Column Shifts.

Example 1 - My roll is a an 81 so I gain a +1 Column Shift to damage since one of the dice is even.

Example 2 - My roll is a 64 so I gain a +2 Column Shift to damage since both are even.

Example 3 - my roll is a 95 so I don't gain a bonus to damage since both dice are odd.

Example 4 - My roll is a 77 so I gain a +3 to damage since my roll is doubles and it succeeded and even or odd doesn't matter.

That's it. It's fast and fairly straightforward.

Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP: Additional Damage

I love the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP rules and its an old favorite of mine, however I would like some random element to damage and have two different options:

Option 1: When an attack hits a target roll a d6 and on a roll of 1 or 2 the damage increases by that many column shifts and on a 3-6 nothing occurs.

Option 2: Works as above but when you roll a 6 it counts as 1 column shift and you preroll the d6. As long as you roll 6s you keep increasing the column shifts, but a 1 or 2 are ignored on all additional rolls.

That's it. Pretty straight-forward.

Excelsior!

#RPGaDAY 2023: Day 16 thru 27

Game You Wished You Owned? This is tough. DnD popped into my head. HERO System/Champions too. Rifts. Savage Rifts is cool but I'd like to fix Rifts. It is my White Whale.

Funniest Game You've Ever Played? Tales of the Floating Vagabond.

Favorite Game System? HERO System. It's a like a language that I'm still fluent in.

Favorite Published Adventure? L5R's Tomb of Iuchi-Ban for 1st Edition.

Will Still Play in Twenty Year's Time? DnD most likely. Hopefully Savage Worlds and Dragonbane.

Favorite Licensed RPG? West End Game's Star Wars RPG.

Best Second Hand RPG Purchase? Villians and Vigilantes.

Coolest Looking RPG or Book? Castle Falkenstein RPG Hardcover.

Complex/Simpler RPG you Play? Complex is HERO System. Simple is Call of Cthulhu.

Unplayed RPG You Own? So. Damn. Many. Rifts.

Favorite Character Sheet? Vampire: The Masquerade's Character Sheets.

Game You'd Like a New Edition Of? West End Game's Star Wars. I appreciate the slipcase FFG did but I'd love for that line to come back.

#RPGaDAY 2023: Day 1 thru 15

First RPG Played This Year? Savage Worlds Deadlands.

First RPG Game Master? My old buddy Todd back in 1991. I was a sophomore in College.

First RPG Bought This Year? Harthbreaker. An OSR + Powered by the Apocalypse hybrid.

Most Recent Game Bought? Shadow of the Weird Wizard. It is on Kickstarter right now and you should back it too.

Oldest Game You've Played? Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

Favorite Game You've Never Played? WitchCraft from Eden Studios.

Smartest RPG You've Played? I don't know what this means to be perfectly frank. I'm going with Numenera for some reason.

Favorite Character? Billy Ray Cordite, a Pathfinder 1E Paladin that wore cowboy boots.

Favorite Dice? My friends bought me those really expensive Sapphire Anniversary DnD Dice that are metal.

Favorite Tie-In Fiction? West End Games had at least one novel for Bloodshadows that I really enjoyed.

Weirdest Game You've Played? Skyrealms of Journey at Gen Con in 1993. Strange setting.

Old Game You Still Play? Marvel Super Heroes/FASERIP from TSR

Most Memorable Character Demise? I had this Monk in 5E, an eladrin, he was just a combat monster and I was it hard to make him unique so I leaned into an existential crisis where he is tempted to join the cult of Iuz because he thinks he is a remorseless killing machine. However, first he discovers a Deck of Illusion and just loves the chaos of it. Then he discovers and then later wishes for a Deck of Many Things and he gets a magic belt from Kord and he begins to believe that the deity worships HIM. He goes off to defeat a Black Dragon in one on one combat but then decides to seduce them. He was almost holing his own in the fight but a grenade a gnome tinkerer gives him blows up on a count of 2 instead of 3 and the Dragon then finishes him off. It was crazy fun.

Favorite Convention Purchase? I have the Castles and Crusades White Box from years and years ago.

Favorite Module/One-Shot? Any thing published by Schwalb Entertainment. They are short and succinct.

 

If You Build It They Will Play: Hedrons

I started playing Magic: the Gathering with the Antiquities set...so 1994, I guess? I've always found many of the game's Planes fairly interesting and Zendikar is among them. In the setting, a geomancer, created these floating monoliths or Hedrons, to imprison the game's riff on the Great Old Ones known as the Eldrazi.

Since the Craglands have been dealing with the threat of expansion of the Far Realms I decided to use the Eldrazi as a change of pace.

The Hedron appears, passing through a newly formed Rift, moments after an unexplained explosion within a nearby mine and immediately begins floating at about 15' in the air where it remains stationary and vibrates at a frequency that is just barely audible, DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) check.

The Rift, which appears as a night-black oval set into the ground, is a slightly larger than an average human and is 15° cooler than the rest of its environment. Looking directly into the Rift requires a DC 12 Wisdom Saving Throw which causes a level of Exhaustion on a failed roll.

Anyone who succeeds on a DC 12 Intelligence (Arcana) check knows what the Hedrons are and that they are rare on this Plane. If the total is a 15 or higher then it is known that the Mage King Suleiman III of Khersia wrote that our Plane and Zendikar's were somehow linked during the sinking of Hem-Hoomod, the Ivory Seat of the Woodeel Empire, which marked the end of the 7th Age and the beginning of our current one. With a total of 18 or higher it is known that Ur-Hukar, the High Vizier to the Ivory Seat, came upon the Invector Prima, a foul tome devoted to the Higher Ungods, the name of the Eldrazi during the 7th Age, which corrupted him body, mind, and soul. If the total is 20 or higher then it is know that that Hussars of Vim use a strange form of magic to detect, track down, and destroy Hedrons and then cleanse the area via the Meteor Swarm spell.