(Originally intended to be the only Monday post this week, I present the first post in the Before the Fall campaign design sequence.)
Eclipse Phase is a fantastic science fiction game; it's about transhumanism, horror, and conspiracy at the base level, published by the fine folks at Posthuman Studios and made available via Creative Commons so that if you can't afford to buy the game, you can still legally acquire copies to play. That said, if you can afford it, buy at least the PDFs. The Posthumans need funding to make more books, after all.
The default timeline of EP is set several years after the events of the Fall, with humanity seemingly stable in the aftermath of what amounted to the apocalypse. 99% of the world was wiped out, the remainder are smeared across the solar system in a thin film of life, and Earth is essentially uninhabitable.
I'm presently designing a short campaign set to take place during the Fall itself, with prebuilt characters to enable everyone to sit down and get used to playing without having to worry about any of the mechanical components of character creation before they're used to the way the game plays. Posts in this series will be about the premade characters, the situation the PCs begin in, the circumstances of the pre-Fall world, and - when my group eventually plays this - the scenarios that I use and a review of how things go.
Cast
An uplifted gorilla who specializes in heavy weaponry; grumpy, grudging, proud, and very defnitely with a mercurial attitude. Not overly fond of the nickname 'Tarzan' that has been applied, but accepts it as better than HU-LS-66903.
A splicer with significant body modification and a winning personality in spite of singularity seeker philosophies; the face for the team, able to schmooze with diplomats and hypercorp execs as easily as with old-world royalty and rank-and-file grunts in any line of work.
An infolife who resides primarily on the primary computer systems of the team's transport; serves as the infosec specialist and the researcher for the team, and sees no reason to be embodied when they can easily jam a drone to do whatever physical work needs doing.
An old-world recon specialist whose moderate biochauvanist streak doesn't keep them from being instantiated in a ghost morph. Chameleon skin and integrated biological armor work well with their lack of any sense of modesty, letting them hide in places that more modest individuals wouldn't be able to handle.
An AGI in a combat-rated synth morph designed as a smart weapon system that was so complex that it was uplifted and hastily indoctrinated to ensure it would at least recognize the value of transhuman life. The AGI's personality may have some similarities to HK-47, alongside a willingness to cheerily assess and classify anything that moves via combat priority.
A research scientist in a synth morph, working to pay for their education and body after an unfortunately lab accident killed their birth body. They've become fascinated with consciousness, sapience, and the process of death and continuity of self in the aftermath of their own first death. A little morbid, but not nihilistic by any stretch.
Rough Synopsis
The PCs are a group working for the United Nations in a future where the UN has manage to achieve some greater level of power simple because the traditional nation-states have begun to fall apart, rent by various disasters and struggles and split open by the behemoth megacorps; hypercorps have begun to take off, capitalizing on openings the emgacorps are too sluggish to really do anything about. Ego backups, cortical stacks, and resleeving are all relatively new, with the team being one of the first groups all outfitted with this kind of technology.
The initial scenario is that of a diplomatic mission, with the group being sent there to look into claims that assassins are stalking a would-be corporate dictator who happens to be wealthy enough to be of value and generous enough to the UN to be a priority. No one seriously expects assassins, but field testing the latest technology is a good enough reason to dispatch them to the site. Of course, hoping for a peaceful situation on a world teetering on the brink of global war, famine, and ecosystem collapse is just too much to hope for...
Restrictions
No character will be an async.
No character will have high-end nanotechnology.
The world is still in a scarcity-based monetary economy.
Firewall and other x-threat-related groups do not yet exist.
The TITANs aren't a thing as yet.
Stay tuned if you're interested!
Next Entry: Setup, Part One
Monday, July 13, 2015
Game Seeds: Celestial Events
(This post should have been posted on Friday, but extreme exhaustion delayed it until today.)
In a fantasy world with active gods, celestial events can have tremendous impact; the amount of story that can be dragged out of a simple event like a stellar conjunction or eclipse is large for a relatively small amount of effort on the part of the GM. Some are harder than others, depending on the shape of the world in your setting. Worlds where celestial bodies literally represent the gods make it easy, but even in ones that mimic the familiar solar system can have important results for interventionist deities.
A simple stellar conjunction is most typical of interest for gods of the night, the stars, or for the things that lurk in the darkness between the stars. Cultists will mark the progression of the stars and events related to whatever comparatively minor forces they serve. Sacrifices to demons or forgotten outer gods can take place when certain conjunctions occur, and that sort of thing is most likely of interest to heroic adventurers looking for a reason to save people from a terrible fate.
Stellar conjunctions can also mark esoteric events like planar conjunctions and gateways to strange places opening. Creatures from other worlds might sneak into the mortal world on such nights, terrain from other lands might overlay the regular terrain, and taking the wrong turn might lead the unwary to places unknown. They can make a great way to inject some strangeness into your game, either temporarily (ending as the conjunction closes) or permanently (the group finds themselves transposed to a new world when they take a wrong turn or have their home territory transposed forever with some other world).
Eclipses are more dramatic and powerful events; a lunar eclipse can be an omen from the gods, a sign of some great celestial struggle, or an intrusion by some outside force as the moons darkens and turns a bloody shade of red. Lunar gods and their priesthoods are the most likely to be involved; seeking omens and casting divinations to seek knowledge during the event, attempting great sacrifices to strengthen their god against the devouring dark, or undertaking a mission to a sacred place where the eclipse will open a way to the god's domain - or to the domain that the god otherwise keeps sealed and warded away, to keep the world safe.
Solar eclipses, brief and dramatic like nothing else, are the star of the show for celestial fireworks. Sun gods and their dark and jealous siblings go to war briefly, the righteous sun god always winning - until they don't, and the eclipse lingers as the sibling takes over, forcing heroes into action to save the world from eternal twilight gloom. Eclipses can also be times when creatures of the night become active for a short while - vampires grabbing victims in the gloom , shapeshifters like werewolves unexpectedly forced to transform by the power of the eclipse, and so on. Omens, portents, prophecies, and childrens with dramatic destinies can also result from solar eclipses, some with a stronger impact than others on a campaign world.
Other events - supernova explosions in the sky that leave a remnant bright enough to see in the day, comets, and shooting stars - can all also have an impact on the world while they linger. Falling stars are often seen as a source of exotic metals like mithral and adamantine, comets are seen as harbingers of disaster, and the flash of a supernova can mean many things - the death or birth of a god, the end of an age, the shift of the balance of the world, or the escape of an ancient evil.
GMs looking to inject a little awesome wonder into their game could certainly do worse than using a few of these in their games to signify events to come.
In a fantasy world with active gods, celestial events can have tremendous impact; the amount of story that can be dragged out of a simple event like a stellar conjunction or eclipse is large for a relatively small amount of effort on the part of the GM. Some are harder than others, depending on the shape of the world in your setting. Worlds where celestial bodies literally represent the gods make it easy, but even in ones that mimic the familiar solar system can have important results for interventionist deities.
A simple stellar conjunction is most typical of interest for gods of the night, the stars, or for the things that lurk in the darkness between the stars. Cultists will mark the progression of the stars and events related to whatever comparatively minor forces they serve. Sacrifices to demons or forgotten outer gods can take place when certain conjunctions occur, and that sort of thing is most likely of interest to heroic adventurers looking for a reason to save people from a terrible fate.
Stellar conjunctions can also mark esoteric events like planar conjunctions and gateways to strange places opening. Creatures from other worlds might sneak into the mortal world on such nights, terrain from other lands might overlay the regular terrain, and taking the wrong turn might lead the unwary to places unknown. They can make a great way to inject some strangeness into your game, either temporarily (ending as the conjunction closes) or permanently (the group finds themselves transposed to a new world when they take a wrong turn or have their home territory transposed forever with some other world).
Eclipses are more dramatic and powerful events; a lunar eclipse can be an omen from the gods, a sign of some great celestial struggle, or an intrusion by some outside force as the moons darkens and turns a bloody shade of red. Lunar gods and their priesthoods are the most likely to be involved; seeking omens and casting divinations to seek knowledge during the event, attempting great sacrifices to strengthen their god against the devouring dark, or undertaking a mission to a sacred place where the eclipse will open a way to the god's domain - or to the domain that the god otherwise keeps sealed and warded away, to keep the world safe.
Solar eclipses, brief and dramatic like nothing else, are the star of the show for celestial fireworks. Sun gods and their dark and jealous siblings go to war briefly, the righteous sun god always winning - until they don't, and the eclipse lingers as the sibling takes over, forcing heroes into action to save the world from eternal twilight gloom. Eclipses can also be times when creatures of the night become active for a short while - vampires grabbing victims in the gloom , shapeshifters like werewolves unexpectedly forced to transform by the power of the eclipse, and so on. Omens, portents, prophecies, and childrens with dramatic destinies can also result from solar eclipses, some with a stronger impact than others on a campaign world.
Other events - supernova explosions in the sky that leave a remnant bright enough to see in the day, comets, and shooting stars - can all also have an impact on the world while they linger. Falling stars are often seen as a source of exotic metals like mithral and adamantine, comets are seen as harbingers of disaster, and the flash of a supernova can mean many things - the death or birth of a god, the end of an age, the shift of the balance of the world, or the escape of an ancient evil.
GMs looking to inject a little awesome wonder into their game could certainly do worse than using a few of these in their games to signify events to come.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Fate of Exiles: The Ranger
Previously: The Marauder
The Ranger is the pure Dexterity class of Path of Exile; they excel at ranged combat and emphasize getting out of the way of danger, rather than simply soaking it up or blocking it with a mystical shield. In terms of lore, Rangers are poachers, thieves who steal from the nobility, and have little care for the proper way of civilized society. Exiled to Wraeclast when captured by those offended by having their excess trimmed for the survival of others, a ranger is well-suited to the dangerous wilderness to be found here.
Crafting a Ranger in Fate Core is simple, on the surface of things. Stealth, speed, and guile are fundamental to their nature; a familiarity with the wilderness and skill with traps is always helpful, as is a certain ruthlessness that softer hearts might find troubling. While the Karui Marauders are furious and loud, a Ranger is silent and often patient, well aware that many battles are won by controlling the field rather than by raw force. Atlhetics and Acrobatics are both central skills for any Ranger, as is Shooting. Beyond this, ranger diverge on their personal sense of how to do things.
Where Marauders simply fail to feel fear, secure in the knowledge that Death walks with them and that their ancestors shield them, Rangers are creatures of the wild; fear is part of what makes them who they are, and what guides their actions. Even the Rangers who carve out a place in Wraeclast are cautious and wary, more than willing to give up ground to a foe when it means they can leave traps behind them that make the next encounter lean in their favor. Rangers know Death, and regard him as the most cunning of foes, to be fought and tricked at every turn. Every day survived is a day where the Ranger has beaten Death at its game.
Stalker-style Rangers will benefit from skills like Stealth and Notice, with lesser slots perhaps going to things like Provoke, Physique, and Will. They'll also likely rely on Shoot and Stealth for their stunts, with trick shots and ambushes to ensure that they control the field of battle even as they bring the fight to their enemies. Less aggressive rangers may benefit from Notice and Crafts over other skills, with a lesser emphasis toward Stealth and other complementary skills. Crafts-based stunts to produce traps on the fly to ensure they remain in control when others are surprised by the horrors that lurk in Wraeclast's corners. Last, there may be some who, by use of the Virtue Gems, become a kind of arcane archer, using their Physique and Will to ensure their survival while their Virtue stunts allow them to do otherwise impossible tricks, like firing a single arrow into the sky and having a zone-wide rain of arrows fall to the earth.
Aspects for Rangers will tend to reflect the way that Rangers are wary survivalists at heart. High Aspects might be things such as Canny Hunter Of The Wilds, Trapsmith of the Webbed Woods, or Unseen Archer-Mage. Troubles will tend to reflect the paranoid and withdrawn behavior Rangers tend to have, with things like Words Can't Be Trusted, Think Thrice Before Acting, or Wild Magic In A Wild Spirit.
Other Aspects will round out the nature of the specific Ranger; the aggressive hunter might have I Can Smell You Coming, Ally Is Just A Nice Word For Bait, and My Law Is The Law Of The Wild. A trapsmith might round out with Ruler Of My Domain, I Live Behind The Shadows, and As Patient As The Trees. The arcane archer might use Aspects like My Will Is A Piercing Arrow, I Hear The Words Of The Wind, and I Can Track The Spirits.
Aggressive Rangers will want to favor Stunts that make the most of their Shoot and Stealth skills, letting them get the drop on others, slink between areas without being observed, and make the most of each shot they get. A trapsmith might favor Crafts stunts that permit them to sow the area with traps they fashion on the fly, forcing those who face them to advance through zones altered to the Ranger's advantage to get near or delaying them while the Ranger escapes to fight another day. An arcane archer will tend to favor Virtue stunts that grant them uncanny skills with their bows, making it rain arrows, making single shots split into multiple shots, or causing shots to be wrapped in lightning or fire.
Ultimately, the Ranger is a class that can be used as a model for anyone who wants to play a world-wise hunter, cautious and careful as they traverse the cursed lands of Wraeclast. They let others take the lead to play the hero while ensuring that their tracks are covered and anything foolish enough to hunt the hunter will find nasty surprises that leave them too hurt to be a threat. Rangers know fear quite well, but they aren't ruled by it - it's just one more tool in their fight to keep Death hungry for another day.
Next conversion post: The Witch, the pure-Intelligence class that commands the dead, the elements, and holds dominion over terrible curses.
The Ranger is the pure Dexterity class of Path of Exile; they excel at ranged combat and emphasize getting out of the way of danger, rather than simply soaking it up or blocking it with a mystical shield. In terms of lore, Rangers are poachers, thieves who steal from the nobility, and have little care for the proper way of civilized society. Exiled to Wraeclast when captured by those offended by having their excess trimmed for the survival of others, a ranger is well-suited to the dangerous wilderness to be found here.
Crafting a Ranger in Fate Core is simple, on the surface of things. Stealth, speed, and guile are fundamental to their nature; a familiarity with the wilderness and skill with traps is always helpful, as is a certain ruthlessness that softer hearts might find troubling. While the Karui Marauders are furious and loud, a Ranger is silent and often patient, well aware that many battles are won by controlling the field rather than by raw force. Atlhetics and Acrobatics are both central skills for any Ranger, as is Shooting. Beyond this, ranger diverge on their personal sense of how to do things.
Where Marauders simply fail to feel fear, secure in the knowledge that Death walks with them and that their ancestors shield them, Rangers are creatures of the wild; fear is part of what makes them who they are, and what guides their actions. Even the Rangers who carve out a place in Wraeclast are cautious and wary, more than willing to give up ground to a foe when it means they can leave traps behind them that make the next encounter lean in their favor. Rangers know Death, and regard him as the most cunning of foes, to be fought and tricked at every turn. Every day survived is a day where the Ranger has beaten Death at its game.
Stalker-style Rangers will benefit from skills like Stealth and Notice, with lesser slots perhaps going to things like Provoke, Physique, and Will. They'll also likely rely on Shoot and Stealth for their stunts, with trick shots and ambushes to ensure that they control the field of battle even as they bring the fight to their enemies. Less aggressive rangers may benefit from Notice and Crafts over other skills, with a lesser emphasis toward Stealth and other complementary skills. Crafts-based stunts to produce traps on the fly to ensure they remain in control when others are surprised by the horrors that lurk in Wraeclast's corners. Last, there may be some who, by use of the Virtue Gems, become a kind of arcane archer, using their Physique and Will to ensure their survival while their Virtue stunts allow them to do otherwise impossible tricks, like firing a single arrow into the sky and having a zone-wide rain of arrows fall to the earth.
Aspects for Rangers will tend to reflect the way that Rangers are wary survivalists at heart. High Aspects might be things such as Canny Hunter Of The Wilds, Trapsmith of the Webbed Woods, or Unseen Archer-Mage. Troubles will tend to reflect the paranoid and withdrawn behavior Rangers tend to have, with things like Words Can't Be Trusted, Think Thrice Before Acting, or Wild Magic In A Wild Spirit.
Other Aspects will round out the nature of the specific Ranger; the aggressive hunter might have I Can Smell You Coming, Ally Is Just A Nice Word For Bait, and My Law Is The Law Of The Wild. A trapsmith might round out with Ruler Of My Domain, I Live Behind The Shadows, and As Patient As The Trees. The arcane archer might use Aspects like My Will Is A Piercing Arrow, I Hear The Words Of The Wind, and I Can Track The Spirits.
Aggressive Rangers will want to favor Stunts that make the most of their Shoot and Stealth skills, letting them get the drop on others, slink between areas without being observed, and make the most of each shot they get. A trapsmith might favor Crafts stunts that permit them to sow the area with traps they fashion on the fly, forcing those who face them to advance through zones altered to the Ranger's advantage to get near or delaying them while the Ranger escapes to fight another day. An arcane archer will tend to favor Virtue stunts that grant them uncanny skills with their bows, making it rain arrows, making single shots split into multiple shots, or causing shots to be wrapped in lightning or fire.
Ultimately, the Ranger is a class that can be used as a model for anyone who wants to play a world-wise hunter, cautious and careful as they traverse the cursed lands of Wraeclast. They let others take the lead to play the hero while ensuring that their tracks are covered and anything foolish enough to hunt the hunter will find nasty surprises that leave them too hurt to be a threat. Rangers know fear quite well, but they aren't ruled by it - it's just one more tool in their fight to keep Death hungry for another day.
Next conversion post: The Witch, the pure-Intelligence class that commands the dead, the elements, and holds dominion over terrible curses.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Fate of Exiles: The Marauder
The Marauder, in Path of Exile, is a strength-oriented class. In terms of the game lore, a Marauder is a warrior from the barbarian Karui tribes, captured by the people of Oriath to be enslaved and then sent into exile, fetching up on the coast of Wraeclast. Tempering raw physical power with magic of the blood and ancestral power, there's little more directly fearsome among mortals than one of these warriors rushing at a person, bellowing a war cry.
In order to create a Marauder using the Fate Core system, we have to look at what makes the Karui barbarian differ from a simple sellsword. People with a deeply spiritual core, the Karui engage in worship of their ancestors, relying on the blessings and power of those who came before them to augment their formidable strength and stamina. Most Marauder character concepts will fall in one of three formats - a raw physical warrior, blessed with incredible strength (Physique), combat prowess (Fighting), and mental fortitude (Will); a shamanistic warrior-priest of the ancestors, whose strength and combat ability are augmented by wisdom from the ancestors (Lore) and the ability to call upon their power (Virtue-based stunts); and a berserk warrior who draws upon their own lifeblood to drive them beyond simple mortal capabilities (reflected best by Aspects and Stunts).
A Marauder knows death intimately; raised from a young age to be a warrior, they've fought wild beasts, hostile tribes, and the soldiers of the civilized parts of Oriath to hone their skills. They know that death always walks at their side, and they're not afraid to feed it the lives of others if the situation makes it necessary. Many refer to death as their dark brother, who will one day take them to meet the ancestors.
Most Marauders will tend to specialize in a particular kind of weapon, focusing on perfecting their ability to fight and kill with that implement, but some take a more general approach, preferring to rely on raw strength and speed to turn whatever they hold into a deadly implement. A few - mostly the most shamanistic of them - might even turn to the more magical forms of weaponry like wands to help augment the powers given to them by the ancestors.
Priority skills if building a Marauder will always be Physique and Fighting; the Karui have had a long time to get good at warfare and killing, after all. Most will also have a good Will, representative of the mental fortitude and personal discipline they have. The shamanistic type of Marauder who relies on the blessings of the ancestors will tend to be good with Lore, Virtue, and Notice. Those who rely heavily on the powers they can wield will need a high Virtue, as well.
Aspects will tend to reflect the savage nature of the Marauder; high concepts might include things such as Death's Dark Brother, Herald of the Ancestors, or Outcast Champion, depending on what flavor you want to give the character. Troubles can include things like Ruin Follows In My Footsteps, I Hear the Whispers Of The Dead, or Fire Fills My Blood.
Other Aspects should be shaped to fit what you want the Marauder to be. A savage berserker who has Death's Dark Brother and Ruin Follows In My Footsteps might also have Doors Or Bones All Break, I'll Rest When I'm Dead, and Even The Dead Fear Me as additional Aspects. A shamanistic Marauder whose High Concept is Herald of the Ancestors and whose Trouble is I Hear The Whispers Of The Dead might have Descendant of Kaom the Lost, Guide of Lost Souls, and I Bear the Burden of the Forgotten as added Aspects.
Some sample stunts might include things built off of Fighting or Physique for any Marauder; other stunts might be built off of Lore (for shamanistic Stunts that call upon ancestral totems) or Virtue. The Outcast Champion might have a Virtue stunt that permits them to create an Aspect of Burning on opponents they strike in melee combat, or Death's Dark Brother might have one for raising the dead as temporary allies.
Ultimately, Marauders should be physical powerhouses who know little of the meaning of fear, at least when they first wash up on Wraeclast's cursed shores. Whether empowered by brute fury, ancestral blessings, or the dark power of the Virtue Gems, they're a force to be reckoned with, able to bring the fight to almost anyone.
Next class conversion: The Ranger, a class built around agility, ranged combat, and animal cunning.
In order to create a Marauder using the Fate Core system, we have to look at what makes the Karui barbarian differ from a simple sellsword. People with a deeply spiritual core, the Karui engage in worship of their ancestors, relying on the blessings and power of those who came before them to augment their formidable strength and stamina. Most Marauder character concepts will fall in one of three formats - a raw physical warrior, blessed with incredible strength (Physique), combat prowess (Fighting), and mental fortitude (Will); a shamanistic warrior-priest of the ancestors, whose strength and combat ability are augmented by wisdom from the ancestors (Lore) and the ability to call upon their power (Virtue-based stunts); and a berserk warrior who draws upon their own lifeblood to drive them beyond simple mortal capabilities (reflected best by Aspects and Stunts).
A Marauder knows death intimately; raised from a young age to be a warrior, they've fought wild beasts, hostile tribes, and the soldiers of the civilized parts of Oriath to hone their skills. They know that death always walks at their side, and they're not afraid to feed it the lives of others if the situation makes it necessary. Many refer to death as their dark brother, who will one day take them to meet the ancestors.
Most Marauders will tend to specialize in a particular kind of weapon, focusing on perfecting their ability to fight and kill with that implement, but some take a more general approach, preferring to rely on raw strength and speed to turn whatever they hold into a deadly implement. A few - mostly the most shamanistic of them - might even turn to the more magical forms of weaponry like wands to help augment the powers given to them by the ancestors.
Priority skills if building a Marauder will always be Physique and Fighting; the Karui have had a long time to get good at warfare and killing, after all. Most will also have a good Will, representative of the mental fortitude and personal discipline they have. The shamanistic type of Marauder who relies on the blessings of the ancestors will tend to be good with Lore, Virtue, and Notice. Those who rely heavily on the powers they can wield will need a high Virtue, as well.
Aspects will tend to reflect the savage nature of the Marauder; high concepts might include things such as Death's Dark Brother, Herald of the Ancestors, or Outcast Champion, depending on what flavor you want to give the character. Troubles can include things like Ruin Follows In My Footsteps, I Hear the Whispers Of The Dead, or Fire Fills My Blood.
Other Aspects should be shaped to fit what you want the Marauder to be. A savage berserker who has Death's Dark Brother and Ruin Follows In My Footsteps might also have Doors Or Bones All Break, I'll Rest When I'm Dead, and Even The Dead Fear Me as additional Aspects. A shamanistic Marauder whose High Concept is Herald of the Ancestors and whose Trouble is I Hear The Whispers Of The Dead might have Descendant of Kaom the Lost, Guide of Lost Souls, and I Bear the Burden of the Forgotten as added Aspects.
Some sample stunts might include things built off of Fighting or Physique for any Marauder; other stunts might be built off of Lore (for shamanistic Stunts that call upon ancestral totems) or Virtue. The Outcast Champion might have a Virtue stunt that permits them to create an Aspect of Burning on opponents they strike in melee combat, or Death's Dark Brother might have one for raising the dead as temporary allies.
Ultimately, Marauders should be physical powerhouses who know little of the meaning of fear, at least when they first wash up on Wraeclast's cursed shores. Whether empowered by brute fury, ancestral blessings, or the dark power of the Virtue Gems, they're a force to be reckoned with, able to bring the fight to almost anyone.
Next class conversion: The Ranger, a class built around agility, ranged combat, and animal cunning.
Monday, July 6, 2015
Into the Concrete Jungle
Urban fantasy is a weird genre. In fiction, it's handy because it gives the author shorthand for things in a way that allows them to focus on the strange and unusual aspects of their stories. No need to describe the police officer and his uniform the way they might describe a king's royal guards; everyone knows what the police look like. Likewise they don't have to worry about describing common items, and it gets easy to describe people who are Important because we're all familiar with it.
It's trickier to do urban fantasy in a tabletop game; people tend to come to the table to escape the stress of reality, not to venture back into it. Much of the time it can be a fast trip into what amounts to a superhero game without the spandex or - if your group is inclined to melodrama - it can head into the well-trod road of angst that serves as the cliche form of a Vampire game. Still, it's worth considering urban fantasy once in a while if your group is tired of the routine settings. Here are a few reasons you might want to consider such a campaign.
Urban fantasy is all about home ground
Most of the hardest parts of running an urban fantasy game are already done for you. Ever struggle with maps for a game session? Just go look up blueprints for modern buildings and, if you use miniatures or play online, slap a grid overlay on them via your image editor of choice. Speaking of online play, or minis if you have a bit of time to cut out printed images and stick them on a base, you'll have no trouble finding icons to use simply by googling the jobs of the NPCs. Most common supernatural creatures can be found, too, either as handy art or as costumes for cosplay or LARPing. It leaves you, as GM, free to focus on the story and the unusual stuff that adds the fantasy to the urban part.
The familiar looks different when you change the lighting
In the same vein as the first reason, you can get a great deal of use out of taking completely mundane locations, people, and objects and brushing a little weirdness, mystery, and magic on them. The old theater that somehow stays open even though no one seems to watch the movies it shows can become the front for some supernatural faction. The person who always sits in the park all day becomes an observer for some outside group with an interest in the area - or a hapless bystander whose unwitting presence deters certain creatures from causing trouble. Museums, full of old objects, hold all kinds of oddities just waiting to be given some unexpected and unanticipated importance in some terrifying ritual. Anything unusual that you see around you can be made into something new just by adding an extra, unexpected layer to it.
Stories on demand by the power of the internet
It is absolutely amazing what you can find as story seeds for an urban fantasy campaign by using Google. Just do a search for Weird News and you can find entire websites - some more reputable than others - laden with news reports about strange and unusual events. Checking it for my region, one that leaps right out is a man crashing his car into a church, supposedly because he was angry with the pastor. But, in an urban fantasy game, that's clearly just an excuse. The man was a thrall to a ampire who had been driven off by the priest. The church was disrupting the flow of ley lines in the area and needed damaged to remove the influence. The man made a pact with a demon, and part of the cost was him desecrating the church. All these and more come to mind simply from one headline. It's an excellent resource.
Conspiracy Theory Central Exchange
Likewise, conspiracy theories - something almost as common on the internet as cat pictures and pornography - can serve as a fantastic resource for urban fantasy games. Most of them require more tweaking than the Weird News offerings, but they can suggest entire campaigns in and of themselves. Look up the conspiracy theories around the Denver Airport sometime and just see how many bizarre things there are that have been woven into a baffling tapestry by conspiracy theorists. If anything, your main work in dealing with these will be trimming them down and adjusting them to be less outlandish, over-the-top, and unrealistic.
It's a change of pace from slaying dragons and rescuing princesses
Not to say all high fantasy games revolve around that, or that sci-fi games tend to mimic Star Wars or Starship Troopers,, but if you play a particular type of game for long enough you can easily find yourself in a rut, getting bored doing something you theoretically enjoy. Urban fantasy can be a great breath of fresh air, letting you get out of old ruts and explore new ideas, with even the worn-in tropes being fairly fresh and interesting.
The greatest urban fantasy heroes come with a shotgun and baseball bat
Ordinarily, people rush to make a vampire, werewolf, wizard, or some other supernatural powerhouse when it comes to playing urban fantasy games. While this can be fun - particularly if you're doing a shot game - some of the greatest stories are going to come from the games where everyone is, at first, just a perfectly normal person who suddenly stumbles onto a whole new layer of the world that they never even imagined before. When a group comprised of an off-duty copy, a muscular construction worker, a nerdy university librarian, and the owner of a local coffee shop find that they have to face down an angry werewolf before it goes from picking off vagrants to slaughtering families in their sleep, it gets far more heroic than when a pair of vampires, a wizard, and a werewolf face off against a dragon. It's the story of the underdog - and pretty much everyone loves an underdog.
The world is full of wonders that we don't see because we're around them
Look at any city with a modern tower. The Space Needle, the Stratosphere, the Sears Tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, they're all things that are both visually impressive and generally unusual enough to be a notable landmark in their respective city. People who live around them hardly notice them, because they're normal. They're a perfect illustration of how we ignore things around us from simple familiarity, leaving architectural wonders in the background. Tap any of these - any city you pick to play almost certainly has things that are ignored and amazing - and transform them into an important place for your game world. Any of those towers I mentioned are perfect for ritual events (to be thwarted), climactic showdowns (with optional plunge from the peak for recurring villains of supernatural longevity), and even as a base of operations for both opponents and lucky heroes.
Old monsters become frightening again when cast in a new light
Werewolves, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, trickster fae, and so on are old, familiar, and worn into such a rut they're forming their own canyons by now. Urban fantasy games can give them all a measure of new life, free to twist the boundaries popular culture has written for them. A vampire, far from being a dried-up and antiquated old lord from some ancient land, could easily become a CEO of a major corporation, the entire board of directors in the creature's thrall, keeping a ruthless grip on wealth and power that puts them beyond any reprisal by mundane means. A werewolf lives among the homeless vagrants, carefully selecting among them to form a pack of hungry predators; far from looking like wolves, they look like hungry alley dogs until they attack.
A ghost who can only be put to rest by having their remains buried in the cemetery from their days of life is forced to remain because a corporation bought the land with the church and cemetery and put a strip mall up over it; and the longer they go without being put to rest, the more violent the manifestations become. A gremlin, once a petty nuisance to mechanics, gets loose in a web cafe and soon the internet manifests a terrifyingly sapient worm infection that attacks whatever will cause the most havoc.
A demon turns up, having spent time studying psychology and the tricks of modern charlatans, and now runs a nascent megachurch dedicated to finding ways to explain every act of wickedness and depravity as sanctified and holy. The possibilities to augment and update classic creatures of horror and supernatural legend to the modern world border on the endless, and can easily create much deeper and more involved plots than any Monster of the Week escapade.
The new shape of the world can breed new monsters just as terrible as the old ones
As we advance as a society, and technology finds new methods to accomplish things, it brings with it the potential to create niches for new predators and new nightmares. No one could have predicted the damage humanity has wrought ecologically - but you can be sure there are, in an urban fantasy, nature spirits harmed and enraged by the damage. Elementals befouled with pollution, fae contaminated and twisted by the artifacts and debris of humanity, and even entirely new creatures spun from ruin and raw energy can come about. What will your players do when, while investigating missing people in a wetlands area, they come across an animate slick of oil and sewage that erupts into a tentacled thing reaching out to drown them, or when they find a nature spirit whose home has become contaminated with toxic metals to where they have jagged spurs of lead jutting from their fingertips and they weep tears of mercury?
The worst monster of all is still the closest to home, and everywhere
Really, this one should be a given, but it bears mentioning. The world is full of "But for the grace of (deity), there go I" stories of people who have fallen to miserable ends. In a world of urban fantasy, you can use this to full advantage - after being confronted by all manner of things like corrupt spirits and infestations of fae that feed on misery, after cleansing accidental manifestations of demons and putting down supernatural scavengers, the group finds their ultimate villain - and it's the middle manager from the local strip mall who found a grimoire and uses it without caring who it hurts, because they figure the world owes them some comfort and reward after whatever wrongs they feel the world has dealt them. They're not evil in any grand sense. They're the worst kind of evil - the petty kind that causes misery out of proportion simply because they perpetrator doesn't know or care about the results of their actions.
Do it right, and your players may look at one another and wonder if one of them has caused unwitting harm like that.
It's trickier to do urban fantasy in a tabletop game; people tend to come to the table to escape the stress of reality, not to venture back into it. Much of the time it can be a fast trip into what amounts to a superhero game without the spandex or - if your group is inclined to melodrama - it can head into the well-trod road of angst that serves as the cliche form of a Vampire game. Still, it's worth considering urban fantasy once in a while if your group is tired of the routine settings. Here are a few reasons you might want to consider such a campaign.
Urban fantasy is all about home ground
Most of the hardest parts of running an urban fantasy game are already done for you. Ever struggle with maps for a game session? Just go look up blueprints for modern buildings and, if you use miniatures or play online, slap a grid overlay on them via your image editor of choice. Speaking of online play, or minis if you have a bit of time to cut out printed images and stick them on a base, you'll have no trouble finding icons to use simply by googling the jobs of the NPCs. Most common supernatural creatures can be found, too, either as handy art or as costumes for cosplay or LARPing. It leaves you, as GM, free to focus on the story and the unusual stuff that adds the fantasy to the urban part.
The familiar looks different when you change the lighting
In the same vein as the first reason, you can get a great deal of use out of taking completely mundane locations, people, and objects and brushing a little weirdness, mystery, and magic on them. The old theater that somehow stays open even though no one seems to watch the movies it shows can become the front for some supernatural faction. The person who always sits in the park all day becomes an observer for some outside group with an interest in the area - or a hapless bystander whose unwitting presence deters certain creatures from causing trouble. Museums, full of old objects, hold all kinds of oddities just waiting to be given some unexpected and unanticipated importance in some terrifying ritual. Anything unusual that you see around you can be made into something new just by adding an extra, unexpected layer to it.
Stories on demand by the power of the internet
It is absolutely amazing what you can find as story seeds for an urban fantasy campaign by using Google. Just do a search for Weird News and you can find entire websites - some more reputable than others - laden with news reports about strange and unusual events. Checking it for my region, one that leaps right out is a man crashing his car into a church, supposedly because he was angry with the pastor. But, in an urban fantasy game, that's clearly just an excuse. The man was a thrall to a ampire who had been driven off by the priest. The church was disrupting the flow of ley lines in the area and needed damaged to remove the influence. The man made a pact with a demon, and part of the cost was him desecrating the church. All these and more come to mind simply from one headline. It's an excellent resource.
Conspiracy Theory Central Exchange
Likewise, conspiracy theories - something almost as common on the internet as cat pictures and pornography - can serve as a fantastic resource for urban fantasy games. Most of them require more tweaking than the Weird News offerings, but they can suggest entire campaigns in and of themselves. Look up the conspiracy theories around the Denver Airport sometime and just see how many bizarre things there are that have been woven into a baffling tapestry by conspiracy theorists. If anything, your main work in dealing with these will be trimming them down and adjusting them to be less outlandish, over-the-top, and unrealistic.
It's a change of pace from slaying dragons and rescuing princesses
Not to say all high fantasy games revolve around that, or that sci-fi games tend to mimic Star Wars or Starship Troopers,, but if you play a particular type of game for long enough you can easily find yourself in a rut, getting bored doing something you theoretically enjoy. Urban fantasy can be a great breath of fresh air, letting you get out of old ruts and explore new ideas, with even the worn-in tropes being fairly fresh and interesting.
The greatest urban fantasy heroes come with a shotgun and baseball bat
Ordinarily, people rush to make a vampire, werewolf, wizard, or some other supernatural powerhouse when it comes to playing urban fantasy games. While this can be fun - particularly if you're doing a shot game - some of the greatest stories are going to come from the games where everyone is, at first, just a perfectly normal person who suddenly stumbles onto a whole new layer of the world that they never even imagined before. When a group comprised of an off-duty copy, a muscular construction worker, a nerdy university librarian, and the owner of a local coffee shop find that they have to face down an angry werewolf before it goes from picking off vagrants to slaughtering families in their sleep, it gets far more heroic than when a pair of vampires, a wizard, and a werewolf face off against a dragon. It's the story of the underdog - and pretty much everyone loves an underdog.
The world is full of wonders that we don't see because we're around them
Look at any city with a modern tower. The Space Needle, the Stratosphere, the Sears Tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, they're all things that are both visually impressive and generally unusual enough to be a notable landmark in their respective city. People who live around them hardly notice them, because they're normal. They're a perfect illustration of how we ignore things around us from simple familiarity, leaving architectural wonders in the background. Tap any of these - any city you pick to play almost certainly has things that are ignored and amazing - and transform them into an important place for your game world. Any of those towers I mentioned are perfect for ritual events (to be thwarted), climactic showdowns (with optional plunge from the peak for recurring villains of supernatural longevity), and even as a base of operations for both opponents and lucky heroes.
Old monsters become frightening again when cast in a new light
Werewolves, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, trickster fae, and so on are old, familiar, and worn into such a rut they're forming their own canyons by now. Urban fantasy games can give them all a measure of new life, free to twist the boundaries popular culture has written for them. A vampire, far from being a dried-up and antiquated old lord from some ancient land, could easily become a CEO of a major corporation, the entire board of directors in the creature's thrall, keeping a ruthless grip on wealth and power that puts them beyond any reprisal by mundane means. A werewolf lives among the homeless vagrants, carefully selecting among them to form a pack of hungry predators; far from looking like wolves, they look like hungry alley dogs until they attack.
A ghost who can only be put to rest by having their remains buried in the cemetery from their days of life is forced to remain because a corporation bought the land with the church and cemetery and put a strip mall up over it; and the longer they go without being put to rest, the more violent the manifestations become. A gremlin, once a petty nuisance to mechanics, gets loose in a web cafe and soon the internet manifests a terrifyingly sapient worm infection that attacks whatever will cause the most havoc.
A demon turns up, having spent time studying psychology and the tricks of modern charlatans, and now runs a nascent megachurch dedicated to finding ways to explain every act of wickedness and depravity as sanctified and holy. The possibilities to augment and update classic creatures of horror and supernatural legend to the modern world border on the endless, and can easily create much deeper and more involved plots than any Monster of the Week escapade.
The new shape of the world can breed new monsters just as terrible as the old ones
As we advance as a society, and technology finds new methods to accomplish things, it brings with it the potential to create niches for new predators and new nightmares. No one could have predicted the damage humanity has wrought ecologically - but you can be sure there are, in an urban fantasy, nature spirits harmed and enraged by the damage. Elementals befouled with pollution, fae contaminated and twisted by the artifacts and debris of humanity, and even entirely new creatures spun from ruin and raw energy can come about. What will your players do when, while investigating missing people in a wetlands area, they come across an animate slick of oil and sewage that erupts into a tentacled thing reaching out to drown them, or when they find a nature spirit whose home has become contaminated with toxic metals to where they have jagged spurs of lead jutting from their fingertips and they weep tears of mercury?
The worst monster of all is still the closest to home, and everywhere
Really, this one should be a given, but it bears mentioning. The world is full of "But for the grace of (deity), there go I" stories of people who have fallen to miserable ends. In a world of urban fantasy, you can use this to full advantage - after being confronted by all manner of things like corrupt spirits and infestations of fae that feed on misery, after cleansing accidental manifestations of demons and putting down supernatural scavengers, the group finds their ultimate villain - and it's the middle manager from the local strip mall who found a grimoire and uses it without caring who it hurts, because they figure the world owes them some comfort and reward after whatever wrongs they feel the world has dealt them. They're not evil in any grand sense. They're the worst kind of evil - the petty kind that causes misery out of proportion simply because they perpetrator doesn't know or care about the results of their actions.
Do it right, and your players may look at one another and wonder if one of them has caused unwitting harm like that.
Friday, July 3, 2015
Seeds - Eclipse Phase: The Mime Cult
The setting of Eclipse Phase is full of all kinds of things, both wondrous and horrible. Earth is essentially gone, the old way of doing things is collapsing, and humanity, despite being 99% wiped out, is still fighting with one another over the Right Way of doing things. Small surprise that some people turn their backs on being human - or transhuman - entirely, then. The Mime Cult is one such group, a small collection of exhumans who use high-bandwidth mesh links, tactical network software, and some rather hazardous psychosurgery to remove their need to communicate.
Operating in Venusian space, the Mime Cult appears, on the surface, to be an old-fashioned group of entertainers who get by on a mix of credits and rep score, performing skits in public without ever saying a word. On all public-access feeds, the members - each one with their skin pigmented to perfectly match mime face paint - appear to stay in character as harmless performers who simply want to bring some levity into the world.
In the hidden spaces of the habitats where they're active, the Mime Cult carries out the other part of their plans. Darkcasting rigs and desktop cornucopia machines crammed into disused maintenance areas where only service bots go allow the members of the group to ply their trade and add to their ranks - invisibility cloaks and cheaply made synths with chameleon skin allow them to abduct the poor, the destitute, and the unwanted from areas with spotty coverage, dragging them to the darkcasting rigs to send their minds to a small tin can hab swinging at the very edge of Venusian space.
This habitat, which appears derelict from the outside, is crammed with simulspace servers. New arrivals are quickly fed into extreme psychosurgical modification programs, carving and molding the original ego into a twisted mockery of itself. For most, it takes only a few days of real time before they emerge with their minds radically altered to accept the dictates of the Mime Cult; by the time they're sent back to the original habitat to be loaded into their newly-pigmented old morph, little remains of the original ego.
Other than the kidnapping, the group might be only a modest threat were it not for the fact that the original Mime Cultists are a trio of exsurgents, their minds spliced by the TITANs to unify them. In constant contact via their mesh inserts, they're a three-faced god to the cult, and they include a subtle strain of the exsurgent virus in the indoctrination procedure. Mime Cultists are driven to spread like a slow cancer, disguising their predations behind a facade of harmless entertainment, until they reach a critical mass in a given habitat.
At that point, the Mime Cult metastasizes, going from a benign-seeming intrusion to a nightmarish vector of destruction. A memetic trigger sweeps through the group, causing them to trigger dormant nanite hives installed while the egos were being modified; in a matter of hours, the modified morphs grow heavy armor, still pigmented to look like mimes. Their fingers give way to lengthy claws, reinforced to let them tear through body armor, while their muscles and nerves are rebuilt to make them stronger and faster.
Once a Mime Cult cell metastasizes, the members sweep through the population of a habitat, slaughtering anyone they encounter and harvesting their cortical stacks to be sent for modification. Once a habitat has been emptied of inhabitants, the cultists upload themselves, leaving delta forks behind that quickly compromise the habitat and upset its orbit to send it tumbling into the atmosphere of Venus, hiding their tracks with distress calls and emergency messages about system failures.
The Mime Cult so far has evaded notice by Firewall, but the destruction of three habitats has started to draw attention; the group is the only thing that the three events have in common, and sentinel teams have been tasked with researching the situation.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Fate of Exiles: Skills
Skills are at the heart of Fate Core; the default list often needs tweaked a bit to fit a given setting, so we'll be going through the list and modifying them to fit the cursed land of Wraeclast. Some may also get a tweak to how they function in terms of the four actions, and we'll be calling back to this list when looking at the various classes and how they could be rendered for Fate of Exiles.
Athletics - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Burglary Theft - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Contacts - Overcome, Create an Advantage,Defend
Crafts - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Deceive - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Drive - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Empathy - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Fight - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack, Defend
Investigate - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Lore - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Notice - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Physique - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Provoke - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack
Rapport - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Resources - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Shoot - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack
Stealth - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Will - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
One skill's name changed, one skill altered in function, one skill removed. Why? Because Theft makes more sense as a skill concept here - you're not going to be burgling in this game, you're going to be doing snatch-and-dash, opening old chests, and trying to palm things; behavior of a sneak-thief in an alley, not a burglar.
Contacts loses Defend as an action because in this setting, your contacts aren't allies our a social network; they're the other exiles, the ones who are scared to leave the dubious protection of the hiding-holes they've found. They can get you supplies and information, letting you overcome and create advantages, but they're not going to be there to watch your back against anyone else.
Drive is just gone; the only way from A to B is by foot. Getting from B back to A can be easier - portals and the ancient wayshrines provide methods of getting back to what passes for civilization that are a great deal easier than slogging along back through miles of mud and rotting corpses.
In addition, we'll be adding a few skills.
Acrobatics - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Throw - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack
Virtue - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Acrobatics is a skill intended to be complementary to Athletics; where Athletics read as a skill of strength, stamina, and speed, Acrobatics becomes a skill of raw agility, dexterity, and physical grace. It can be used to dodge hazards, set the character up in strange and advantageous locations, and enable them to bob, weave, and dive out of harm's way.
Throw is meant to complement Shoot, the latter being a skill of bows and crossbows while the former speaks of throwing knives, hand axes, javelins, and the like. Simple uses of throwing might include hurling knives to make handholds, which could either Overcome an obstacle or Create an Advantage; create an Aspect like Sliced Across the Hamstring on an opponent; or simply be used to hit people in other zones.
Virtue is a skill that serves as a base for the effects of the active skills of Path of Exile, the Virtue Gems. Ranks in this skill indicate the character is an accomplished user of the Virtue Gems, with a wider range of unusual options than someone who simply relies on their skill at arms or their quick wits to get them out of trouble.
Other than these changes, the skill tree from Fate Core remains intact; the specific effects of the Virtue skill will come in a later post talking about the Gems, their use, and how to mimic those effects in Fate with extras and stunts.
Athletics - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Contacts - Overcome, Create an Advantage,
Crafts - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Deceive - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Empathy - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Fight - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack, Defend
Investigate - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Lore - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Notice - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Physique - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Provoke - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack
Rapport - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Resources - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Shoot - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack
Stealth - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Will - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
One skill's name changed, one skill altered in function, one skill removed. Why? Because Theft makes more sense as a skill concept here - you're not going to be burgling in this game, you're going to be doing snatch-and-dash, opening old chests, and trying to palm things; behavior of a sneak-thief in an alley, not a burglar.
Contacts loses Defend as an action because in this setting, your contacts aren't allies our a social network; they're the other exiles, the ones who are scared to leave the dubious protection of the hiding-holes they've found. They can get you supplies and information, letting you overcome and create advantages, but they're not going to be there to watch your back against anyone else.
Drive is just gone; the only way from A to B is by foot. Getting from B back to A can be easier - portals and the ancient wayshrines provide methods of getting back to what passes for civilization that are a great deal easier than slogging along back through miles of mud and rotting corpses.
In addition, we'll be adding a few skills.
Acrobatics - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Defend
Throw - Overcome, Create an Advantage, Attack
Virtue - Overcome, Create an Advantage
Acrobatics is a skill intended to be complementary to Athletics; where Athletics read as a skill of strength, stamina, and speed, Acrobatics becomes a skill of raw agility, dexterity, and physical grace. It can be used to dodge hazards, set the character up in strange and advantageous locations, and enable them to bob, weave, and dive out of harm's way.
Throw is meant to complement Shoot, the latter being a skill of bows and crossbows while the former speaks of throwing knives, hand axes, javelins, and the like. Simple uses of throwing might include hurling knives to make handholds, which could either Overcome an obstacle or Create an Advantage; create an Aspect like Sliced Across the Hamstring on an opponent; or simply be used to hit people in other zones.
Virtue is a skill that serves as a base for the effects of the active skills of Path of Exile, the Virtue Gems. Ranks in this skill indicate the character is an accomplished user of the Virtue Gems, with a wider range of unusual options than someone who simply relies on their skill at arms or their quick wits to get them out of trouble.
Other than these changes, the skill tree from Fate Core remains intact; the specific effects of the Virtue skill will come in a later post talking about the Gems, their use, and how to mimic those effects in Fate with extras and stunts.
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