Mu-Pan – Loutish Hunters

/ jstater / 1 Comment

Missed a day, so two Mu-Pan encounters today. Just click on the Mu-Pan tag at the end of the post to find other posts, including a map.

0129. A small village of loutish hunters is located in this hex, surrounded by a stone wall and four stout towers. The hunters are mainly trappers, setting snares in the mountain passes and wooded crevasses in the spring and summer and then retiring into their village to smoke their pipes and chew eat pickled meat. The villagers are skilled gamblers and even more skilled archers. Their greatest treasure is an opal jar that contains the imprisoned soul of an oni. The jar is kept in the crypt of the former ruler, a tsanjani monk that made a habit out of chaining the maidens of the village to the walls of his shrine and watching them slowly starve. The villagers do not miss the man and have done their best to prevent the tsanjani from discovering the death of their reeve.

0213. A large village of tsanjani peasants cultivates edible fungus in the steamy caves that line the walls of the valley. Pungent streams of piping hot water emerge from these caves and spill into medicinal pools, eventually finding their way into a gentle stream that flows into the valley of the qal. The village is surrounded by an ancient, weathered stone wall caked with sulfur. The village is ruled by an overbearing magistrate of the tsanjani named Quatherennee. Quatherennee has pale yellow skin, stubbly gray hair and steel-gray eyes. The village is defended by two companies of men-at-arms (archers and heavy infantry) as well as semi-tamed white babboons. The babboons are chained near the village’s large iron gate and outside the magistrates court. Patrols of warriors always use one or two babboons as scouts. Visitors can hire out Shoolinsth the piao-ke (armed escort) to guide them through the mountains.

| Shoolinsth, Bujin Lvl 5: HP 12 [32]; AC 3 [16]; Move 12; Save 12 (11 vs. death & poison); CL/XP 5/240; Special: Follow through. Hanburi, sode, kota, do-maru, suneate, nodachi (1d6+1), tanto (1d6-1), daikyu (100′, 2 shots per round, 1d6), 10 leaf head arrows, 10 armor-piercing arrows, 3 frog crotch arrows.

| Quatherenee, Aristocrat: HD 3 (8 hp); AC 5 [14]; Atk 1 weapon (1d6); Move 12; Save 14; CL/XP 3/60.

Mu-Pan – High Barbarians

/ jstater / 6 Comments

In the past, I have generally grabbed several encounters and posted them on the blog as a preview/freebie of my latest Nod sandbox. This time around, I’m going to use the 1 in 6 rule. Currently, I’m writing a few different supplements – Tome of Horrors Complete, Mu-Pan Hex-Crawl and Mystery Men! To keep up with them, I figure out in advance how many total “encounters” I need to write, figure out when I want to be done and then divide to figure out how many encounters a day I need to write. The key, of course, is to sit down and write every single day, even when you don’t want to.

For example, if I do about 4.5 monster conversions/encounters a day for Tome of Horrors Complete, I can finish the book by the end of March. In fact, I’m doing 6 a day to stay ahead of the game. Likewise, I’m trying to do about 6 encounters a day for Mu-Pan. My plan is to pick one encounter each day (rolled randomly, of course) and post it on the blog. For Mystery Men’s Shore City, I’ve actually been doing next to nothing – still need to draw the official map and figure out how to do a city-crawl. I think I’m going to do it block x block, classify the blocks as “downtown”, “industrial”, “suburban”, “waterfront” and then include some general urbo-morphs for the different types of cityscape. When I do it that process up and running, it will work on the same principle.

To go along with the Mu-Pan posts, I’ll be highlighting some of the more interesting bits of Asian art I’ve collected. They won’t always have anything to do with the encounter of the day, but c’est la vie. The encounter of the day for Mu-Pan is …

0113. Situated high in the mountains there is a small village of barbaric hunters. The village consists of about 20 wattle-and-daub houses surrounded by a palisade. The village is constructed on a wide shelf of black stone situated beneath a snow-capped peak. Due to the possibility of avalanches, and the necessities of hunting, the people of the village have learned never to raise their voices.

The barbarians of the village dress in shaggy, white coats and wear fur-lined boots. They have buff-colored skin and coarse black hair. The 60 hunters of the tribe paint their faced and knuckles with viridian paint. They are known for their brawn (+1 to hit and damage) and ability to move silently (they surprise in a roll of 1-2 on 1d6). The hunters carry bunches of six javelins and obsidian knives. They are commanded by a powerful chief called Narikit.

In the past month, a captured merchant (taken in a raid on the outskirts of the valley of the qal [XXX]) has captured the heart of the chief’s daughter, Dagusta, much to the chagrin of Hargene, the warrior who captured the merchant.

The tribe’s treasure consists of 900 gp worth of animal pelts.

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Again, you’ll notice an “XXX”, this time as a placeholder for the hex number of a qal settlement. [Aside – don’t like the name of the qal – need to work on it].

Oh, and I think I’ve named my rivers:

West 1 = Puar-Sronjj (“String of Pearls”)
West 2 = Tauku (“Jade Tiger”)
West 3 = Maoukun (“Maiden”)
West 4 = Ronj (“King”)
East 1 = Sonossur (“Left Hand”)
East 2 = Ciphur (“Copper”)
East 3 = Jruas (“Great”)

The language is imaginary – actually I use the language mixer at Chaotic Shiny (my favorite random generator site, if it must be known) using “melodic 1” and then altering things as I see fit.

Cavalcade of Stuff

/ jstater / 9 Comments

A few random bits and pieces today. I’m trying to get some traction on finishing Mystery Men! and writing the Mu-Pan material, but mostly working on the conversion of Tome of Horrors and writing encounters/lairs for all the beasties therein. Lots of fun, but lots of work as well. Currently up to mid-“S”, have until end of March to finish. Pray for me. Sending HCC #3 off to the Frog God today (if I don’t forget to). So, enjoy some random junk …

FROM THE “OVERHEARD IN MY LIVING ROOM” FILE
My wife was quizzing my daughter on ancient China, and one question about what the called the trade route from China to the west had as a possible answer “The Polyester Road”. Brainstorm.

Imagine post-apocalypse America. In this case, the apocalypse in question is a new ice age. The planet is colder and drier. Canada is under a sheet of ice, the U.S. Midwest is a sand sea desert and the Mississippi a mere trickle. Two population centers survive in North America. On the west coast you have folks living and farming from Southern California into Mexico, with almost all farmland going to grow food. On the east coast, you have large settlements from Virginia to Florida, with the most powerful and wealthy settlement being the city-state of Kinston (in what we now call North Carolina). Why is Kinston so powerful? They alone know the secret of making polyester. Yes, for societies that now wear two hundred year-old rags and animal pelts, that have to push all their resources into growing food, there is no more valuable material than polyester, the fabric of kings. Since the destruction of the Panama Canal, it has made economic sense for the merchants of California & Mexico to make their way across the Void Zone at the heart of North America along the famous Polyester Road to Kinston.

I’m picturing the well-to-do in leisure suits, the legions of Kinston in fiberglass/polyester armor, the city-state ruled by the Lords DuPont, etc.

FROM THE “DANG, THAT’S ONE BIG APE” FILE

That would be French singer Sylvie Vartan with Kong on the Champs Elysees. I can’t tell you the last time I had a chanteuse sit on my stomach in the middle of the street. Them big guys get ever’thin’. Via Kippage – NSFW

FROM THE “WHAT THE?” FILE

Nathanial Clark, “I approach the cavern.” Via Super Punch.

FROM THE “INTERESTING PLACE TO VISIT” FILE

Freeride Mountain Biking, via Super Punch.

Ice Glacier Caves, via Super Punch.

Blue Arabian Desert via Astro_Soichi, my favorite astronaut.

The Human Planet from the BBC. Honestly, if I could pack a billionth of the wondrous-ness of this video into Nod, I’d be a happy man.

FROM THE “DREAMING OF WONDER WOMAN” FILE

Perhaps my most aptly named file. Via Super Punch. Yeah, I like Super Punch.

FROM THE “THEY READ MY MIND” FILE

Victorian Nurse-Bot by Doktor A. via Super Punch. Looks like the automatons I pictured running the Empire of Vex in the PARS FORTUNA setting.

Mecha-Rust Monster

/ jstater

Chris Burdett just posted his interpretation of the rust monster. Posing the question “What kind of monster has a propeller tail?”, he decided it had to be some arcane-mechanical creation.

I thought it was a very creative interpretation of the original, so I had to share for the benefit of folks not following his blog (and if you’re one of them, what are you waiting for – follow him already!)

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Articles I’m pondering or working on – Gods of Mu-Pan (of course), Seven Samurai (a run-down of seven famous samurai from Mu-Pan, along with some ideas on customizing the class) and the Mechanicians, a new race/class for Pars Fortuna. Stay tuned, gentle reader.

Oh – and regarding the gods of Mu-Pan. I’m thinking of two options – one is to use Ampersand-ized versions of Chinese and Japanese gods, the other is to use Ampersand-ized versions of the Gods of Pegana, with a few real gods and goddesses thrown in for good measure. Any preferences out there? Mana-Yood-Sushai just sounds right for Mu-Pan.

Mu-Pan – Introduction

/ jstater / 9 Comments

Okay, let’s get this Mu-Pan thing started.

So far, I’ve finished the base map and the history of the region and I’m working up the regional descriptions. I’m going to put the information down here as I’ve written it so far. Some folks have asked “how do you write your stuff”. You’ll see in what I have so far that, as I start writing a region, I leave a few bits blank. The rivers, for example, have no names yet – I just haven’t decided on them yet. You’ll also find a few XXX’s in the text. When I’m writing and I want to skip something to refer back to later, I use XXX. That way, I can do a quick search in a document for “XXX” to find those things and fix them before publishing.

I also realized as I was writing it that I needed to gather some intelligence on the flora and fauna of China and Japan. Actually, I highly suggest anyone doing a campaign setting hit the encyclopedias (or wikipedia) first – start with a search for a region and then just begin exploring everything. Look for interesting words, strange peoples, strange objects, etc. The idea is to produce something memorable to people who have probably been playing the game for a few years and have already seen the basics. When players talk about where they’ve been and what they’ve seen, a woodland of gigantic maples and purple-green ferns haunted by satyrs with white, wooly fur and crooked horns is more fun than “that forest where we saw the satyr”.

So, without further ado …

Mu-Pan, Land of the Dragon Chans

Mu-Pan is the fabulous land of jade, silk and lotus blossoms that makes princes of Motherlander merchants. The cloth merchants of Lyonesse can tell you the way to Mu-Pan – the so-called Jade Road that runs through the Venatian League, across the dread plain of Kisthenes, through the golden sands of the Cradle of the Sun and finally into the green hills at the center of the Land of the Dragon Chans.

History
Mu-Pan’s history is as older than the history of mankind on Nod. While the Venatian tribes were scratching a living as hunter-gatherers in their woodlands and the priest-kings of Nabu were learning at the feet of visitors from beyond the void and before mighty Iram fell to the endless scheming of demons, Mu-Pan was a land of dragons. In fact, it still is by comparison to the lands that surround it, even though its most famous residents are not nearly as plentiful or public as they once were. When men came into the land of the dragons from the highlands of Tsanjan, they were nothing but primitive savages. Most dragons found them easy prey, but the black wyrms of the southern jungles were more clever than that. They appreciated how adaptable and clever humans could be, and more importantly how quickly they spawned. This was the beginning of the Black Dragon Clan and ultimately of all the dragon clans.

The black dragons used their human army to slay their rivals, and soon brought the southern half of Mu-Pan under their sway, reveling in the rich tribute from lesser wyrms. Dragons, being clever creatures, quickly caught on and founded armies of their own. In time, the land of the dragons was split into four powerful kingdoms, each ruled by a dragon chan – the southern kingdom of the Black Dragons, the northern kingdom of the Gold Dragons, the western kingdom of the Cloud Dragons and the eastern kingdom of the Mist Dragons. The white dragons of the eastern mountains were too stupid to play politics, and contented themselves with dining on any hairless ape that wandered into their territory. The dragon turtles of the eastern seas became objects of reverence for the Nakdani sea tribes, but never founded a kingdom.

For centuries the Four Kingdoms struggled with one another until the Black Kingdom allied itself with the men of the Tsanjan plateau. Renowned demonologists, the Tsanjani gave the soldiers of the Black Kingdom the power and weapons they needed to tip the balance of power in their favor and establish their monarch as the first High Chan of the Mu-Pan Empire. The so-called Glorious Son of Heaven and Earth established a dynasty that lasted over a century before being toppled by the gold dragons, who installed the Supreme Bureaucrat of the Jade Court on the imperial throne, and so on, with each ancient kingdom taking its turn until the incessant wars and intrigues finally ground the empire down to mere shade of its former glory.

Into this rode Kali, the Tiger Empress of the steppe leading a horde of nomads. The Tiger Men, as they were known, conquered not only the Mu-Pan Empire, but the lands beyond. For a time, they even beat their fists on the outer gates of Tsanjan. Under the Tiger Empress, the empire was renewed. Order was re-established, troublesome families exiled or destroyed and a scholarly caste of eunuchs established to manage the new possessions of the Tiger Lords. When the islands of the Nakdani sank beneath the waves in a holocaust of divine fire, the Tiger Empress first defended her coasts from their depredations and then finally allowed them to settle in the lands she had seized from the Gold Dragons, herself taking the title of Shogun.

For thirty years the Tiger Empress reigned supreme. And then came whispered rumors of the birth of the Jade Child. Ancient prophecies told of an infant born from the sea foam, the daughter of the elements who would initiate an epoch of peace and prosperity. All at one chaos descended on Mu-Pan – the Golden Dragons mobilized, the Black Dragons sent their spies into the wilds to locate the prophesied babe and the Tiger Empress sent her warriors into every town and village seeking the girl with the hair like sea foam and the jade-blue eyes. As often happens in Nod, a party of adventurers found itself embroiled in these events, and eventually found themselves the rescuers and protectors of the Jade Maiden. When the armies of the Gold Kingdom and Cloud Kingdom finally descended on the imperial city of Cambulac, the Tiger Empress and her court were nowhere to be found and the Jade Maiden became the Jade Empress.

This is the Mu-Pan into which new adventurers will step, a land of peace on the surface, but with powerful forces surging underneath. A land of looted monasteries and ruined strongholds, ninja spies and Tsanjani cultists, lordless knights and caravans protected by dart bureaus. Mu-Pan, Land of the Dragon Chans.

Geography
The map herein contains the central portion of the great Mu-Pan Empire, with portions of the four ancient dragon kindoms represented. North of this map is the largest portion of the Golden Kingdom of the North and the vast Golden Steppe. To the south of this map are the jungles that have been partially colonized by Mu-Pan and the more southerly, unexplored jungles of Terra Obscura. To the east of this map are the remainder of the Mountains of Dawn, the rocky coasts inhabited by the pale skinned Nakdani and the sunken remnants of their former home islands.

Rivers
WEST1
WEST2
WEST3
WEST4
EAST1
EAST2
EAST3

Celestial Hills
The Celestial Hills are a large collection of limestone mounds covered in sweet, blue-green grasses. The hills are the breadbasket of the empire, supporting thousands of rice paddies in the broad river valleys and terraced fields of mulberries, tea, pepper, XXX and grains in the hills that surround those river valleys.

The Celestial Hills are spanned by two the empire’s three great rivers, the WEST2 and WEST3, as well as much of the Grand Canal that links those rivers. This nexus of rivers and canals also makes the Celestial Hills the most populous portion of the empire and home to several market towns and the great northern port of Artuk.

The Celestial Hills have long been at the center of the armed disputes between the dragon kingdoms, with the northern portion ruled by the Golden Kingdom, the central portion by the Cloud Kingdom and the southern by the Black Kingdom. With the coming of the Tiger Empress, these holdings were greatly reduced, with old families having their ancestral holdings give to newly created noble lines from the nomadic warriors that helped her conquer the empire.

Cities and Towns –

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Golden Steppe
The Golden Steppe stretches between Mu-Pan, Ultima Thule and the Motherlands and is home to hundreds of nomadic tribes, the southern tribes being golden skinned Ulu-Than people (former allies of the Tiger Empress) and the northern tribes being the red-skinned Luhan people. The steppe is composed of rolling hills covered in grasses and sometimes supporting small copses of trees.

The southern portion of the steppe has long been ruled by the Golden Kingdom of the North, renowned warriors and moralists of the empire. The Golden Dragons were at the forefront of the rebellion against the Tiger Empress, along with her so-called allies among the Nakdani of the Ronin Hills.

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Great Yamas
The Great Yamas are a collection of mountain ranges that include some of the tallest mountains on Nod. The Great Yamas surround the Tsanjan Plateau, a broken land of forbidding blocks of basalt ruled by a theocracy of mad monks that have made alliances with the moon folk.
Taken in their totality, the Great Yamas touch on the jungles of Terra Obscura and Lemuria, the grasslands of Pwenet, the deserts of Nabu and the Cradle of the Sun and the hills of the Golden Coast. The eastern ranges of the Great Yamas border on the Celestial Hills that lie at the heart of the Mu-Pan Empire. As one travels from the upper slopes to the wooded lower slopes, the mountains change to picturesque limestone mounds separated by misty canyons of junipers, pines and ferns cut by silver streams. All of the empire’s major rivers have their origins in the Great Yamas.

The western dragon kingdom, the so-called Cloud Kingdom, is situated among these wooded limestone mounds and the lower slopes of the Great Yamas.

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The Hunting Grounds
These grasslands are thick with tigers and serpents and notoriously flat. Trees are almost unseen on the plains (by imperial decree). The WEST3 River cuts across the plain, spilling into the Eastern Sea where an acient port once stood. The port was razed by imperial decree, its citizens moved overland to the newly constructed imperial city of Khatan. Brick roads built precisely five and one-half feet tall radiate from the imperial city’s mammoth gates. These avenues are 40 feet wide, allowing masses of soldiers to quickly make their way to the to the rivers and canals that serve to link the empire.

The grasslands have been nicknamed “the hunting grounds” by the peasantry, owing both to the habit of the imperial court under the Tiger Empress to go on grand hunting expeditions and on the common punishment for folk who displeased the empress – namely being stranded on the grasslands to be stalked and devoured by the blue-furred tigers.

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Mountains of Dawn
The Mountains of Dawn are a collection of snowcapped peaks. The lower slopes provide fine grazing land for the small mountain cattle, while the upper valleys are home to white dragons, mountain hags, bands of tengu and yamabushi dwelling as hermits.

The rocky coasts surrounding the Mountains of Dawn were settled by the Nakdani after their island homes sunk into the sea, the result of a dispute between the power hungry priests of that land and their sea god. They proved so troublesome to the empire that the Tiger Empress finally settled the most warlike of the Nakdani chieftains in the Ronin Hills.

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Ronin Hills
The so-called Ronin Hills are the foothills of the Mountains of Dawn. They are lower, more rugged hills than the Celestial Hills to the west and are populated by rebellious, headstrong Nakdani warlords who were granted land in the hills by the Tiger Empress as a hedge against the four ancient kingdoms. The Ronin Hills are known for the frequent skirmishes between the forces of the warlords, the dragonnes that stalk the warmer, southerly portion of the hills, the magnificent cherry blossoms that dot the river valleys in the spring and the icy cold rivers that spill out of the Mountains of Dawn, forming rapids and waterfalls in their headlong rush to the sea. The EAST1 flows into the WEST2, while the EAST2 flows into the WEST3.

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Shadow Hills
The southern Shadow Hills are the center of the Black Kingdom’s power. They are more thickly wooded than the Celestial Hills and eventually turn into the jungles of Terra Obscura. The lords of the south are known to be unreliable allies of the Tsanjan and disloyal allies of the Tiger Empress. When push came to shove, they supported the Tiger Empress against the other rebellious kingdoms and lost a great deal of prestige, having almost no representation in the new imperial government except as its spy masters, a job at which they excel and, frankly, would have done anyway for the empire’s enemies.

XXX-sub-tropical chinese trees, vegetables, fruit

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White Crane Marsh
White Crane Marsh is a vast wetland that was long the possession of the XXX family until the Tiger Empress suspected them of disloyalty and had their stronghold destroyed. The entire family was destroyed and their line ended, though one of their former retainers was permitted by the new Jade Empress to rebuild the stronghold and re-establish the line in return for his help in placing her on the throne.

The marshes are exceptionally lovely, the water clear and bright, the reeds tall and a limpid green in color. The marsh is created by the WEST1 flowing from the wooded valley of Qalun where dwell the four-armed, serpentine qal and their decadent princes.

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Until next time …

Happy Birthday Mr. Eisner

/ jstater / 4 Comments

Hopefully I’m not too late for this one, since I only just found out that today (I’ll keep that term vague so as not to incriminate myself) is Will Eisner’s birthday. Eisner certainly elevated the comic book medium and he produced some truly wonderful art. His most famous creation is probably The Spirit. The Spirit is a noir detective in a domino mask (Eisner’s boss wanted a costume, and Eisner was sick of costumes, so he gave him a mask). Put in suspended animation by Dr Cobra, he was buried but managed to escape his internment. He decides to abandon his old identity and, with the blessings of Police Commissioner Dolan, an old friend, becomes a vigilante.

The Spirit holes up in a secret hideout underneath his own grave. Over the course of his adventures he tangles with femme fatales, a mad scientist or two and The Octopus, his arch-enemy and a master of disguise. His primary sidekick is one Ebony White, an unfortunate racist caricature in appearance and speech, who otherwise proves to be well loved by his allies and a true friend and helper to the Spirit.

As a Mystery Men! character, the Spirit is a good example of a non-powered adventurer, thus the low starting XP. Despite not technically having any powers, he certainly manages to survive some rough scrapes and shows some keen detective skills, thus the heroic attributes.

Deviant Friday – Steve LeCouilliard Edition

/ jstater / 3 Comments

Steve LeCouilliar, AKA Fearless Fosdick, writes and draws comedy and action-comedy comic books. Specifically comics about a barbarian mom called Una and comics about Much the Miller’s Son. I love his pen and ink work and would love to see some single-panel strips of his show up in old school products a’la the strips that appear in the old DMG.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would love to have somebody play an Una-like character in a game – barbarian woman with children. Would be lots of fun.

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A moment for self-promotion …

Got to see a printer’s proof of my first Hexcrawl Classic for the Frog God yesterday. Looks good – hopefully will be out soon. I’m going to try to put up a permanent page for each “product line” I’m involved with, providing links to the books, blog posts related to them, etc. Hopefully I’ll get them finished this weekend.

Google-Sourcing the Planes

/ jstater / 9 Comments

Those who know the real me know that I work as a commercial real estate researcher in fabulous Las Vegas. A good portion of my job involves maintaining a database of c. 5000 property records and c. 7000 availability records – and that means hours of data entry. If you’re not familiar with the concept of data entry, allow me to assure you that it can be just as boring as it sounds. So, every hour or so I poke my head above the waves of data and look around – sometimes that means Facebook, sometimes checking email, and sometimes doing a random search in Google. Thus – today’s post …

So, I randomly decide to do an image search today for “Paradise”. Well, not entirely randomly – somebody was playing Van Halen in a nearby cubicle. Anyhow – it struck me that it might be fun to see how the planes of the Great Wheel look via Google image searches.

ASTRAL PLANE
We’ll start our tour of the planes on the Astral Plane. Google’s Astral Plane is bluish white it seems – some areas lighter, others darker. I’m picturing symbols floating about, each standing for something of COSMIC IMPORTANCE and thus generally ignored by the folks that actually walk the planes – killers of things and takers of stuff.

TWIN PARADISES
Paradise to modern humans is a tropical island – warm sun, white sands, crystal clear waters. The last thing it needs are adventurers messing everything up. Should therefore be the first place on any chaotic’s itinerary.

ELYSIUM
If Google is to be believed, Elysium is a resort for the gods. I’m seeing a virtual paradise surrounded by a desert of red sands patrolled by robots and tanks. In the middle there’s a deific resort hotel where all the beautiful people of the planes come to be seen (and presumably robbed by the likes of Loki and Raven).

HAPPY HUNTING GROUNDS
The Happy Hunting Grounds are enlivened by introducing of race cars, giant see-through hippos and rousing games of cricket. Apparently the HHG is the outer plane’s answer to a sport’s park/recreation center. Buffalo hunting, golf, racing – a place for the gods to stretch their legs and get a little exercise.

OLYMPUS
If you want to search for Olympus, search for Mount Olympus – otherwise you get cameras. So we have a lofty peak populated by half naked god-models with very human appetites for sex and power. The gods of Gladsheim will go out and romp with you, while the gods of Olympus will totally use you for their amusement. Adventurers beware – they’re laughing at you, not with you.

GLADSHEIM
Let’s be honest – it’s Asgard. Gladsheim is Asgard. An image search for Asgard gives you Kirby  vikings, heroic landscapes and lofty buildings. I see Gladsheim as being the most hexcrawl worthy of the planes – a place for old adventurers to go and hang out with the gods and kick around the godly fjords and mountains and forests looking for godly things to kill that one may acquire their godly stuff. Fewer viking babes in the search results than I would have liked, though.

LIMBO
Limbo is either a plane of people bending over backwards to walk under sticks or Hell’s waiting room. There’s a walled city there surrounding by huge people, two giants doing something that seems deeply inappropriate, weird demons – a real grab bag of horrors.

PANDEMONIUM
Pandemonium is Hell’s downtown – lots of civic buildings and demonic politicians (i.e. politicians). There’s probably a tax for everything and you need a license to walk down the street or pick your nose. Tammany Hall taken to its extreme.

ABYSS
The never-ending plane of demons in D & D becomes a plane of water and pro wrestlers in Google Images. I’m imaging the demons “organized” into a myriad of wrestling federations, all gunning for the belt currently held by Demogorgon. Few suspect that Vince McMahon is the power behind the throne. Okay – everybody suspects it.

TARTERUS
Hell’s prison – a little less exciting than Hell itseld, large guys with mauls, surprised monkeys, half-finished mosaics and cramped titans plotting revenge against the gods of Olympus. If you hate the Olympians, you can make some great contacts in Tartarus. Just don’t bring up the “Tarterus Incident” – still a sore subject in those parts.

HADES
Hades illustrates the problem of doing an image search for anything that has ever appeared in a Disney movie. I had to search for Hades + Underworld, and still got the big blue flamehead. Naturally, the images are all Hades-centric, so I’m picturing a land of the dead ruled by an arch-egotist. Like a Hitler/Mussolini/Kaddafi/Sadam-type, he has statues and images of himself everywhere. The plane also looks pretty adventurous – boiling seas, burning caverns, weird cities – all things an old schooler can get behind.

GEHENNA
Gehenna is a real place – a valley in Israel. In a way, that makes the images of Gehenna the most interesting of the Lower Planes – in place of a heavy metal album cover, we get a lower plane that looks rather mundane. Or would be mundane if Chuck Norris hadn’t shown up to kick some demonic ass. I’m seeing a plane of souls that don’t know they’ve been damned, but do know they aren’t happy and can’t figure out what to do to change things. They’re trapped in their own lack of imagination.

NINE HELLS
Fire, darkness, devils chewing on people’s heads, torment, hags, Hello Kitty, Meatloaf, AC/DC and a rapper with regrettable dental hygiene. Welcome to Hell. I’m guessing Hell makes all the other Lower Planes roll their eyes – how cliched! Come on Lucifer – a billion years of fire and brimstone – how about something new? Lucifer smites the critic, of course, but deep down he knows he’s completely out of ideas. Hell is where the movers and shakers of the Lower Planes congregate, because Hell understands the concept of the D&D end game: Baron – Marquis – Count – Duke – King.

ACHERON
Acheron is the plane of Death Metal. ‘Nuff said. Raggi’s demonic equivalent publishes a ‘zine there.

NIRVANA
I wonder how the enlightened, centered Buddhas are handling the introduction of Kurt Cobain to their ordered paradise. Eh – they probably just ignore him.

ARCADIA
Google Arcadia is a lovely land of crystal clear waters, tall trees and massive war ships that ply sea and sky. Personally, I don’t see how the addition of sky ships can’t improve a plane that is otherwise so boring.

SEVEN HEAVENS
No major surprise to the color scheme here – whites and celestial blues. The giant carrot is a nice touch, and I’d love it if the first thing you saw when you reached Heaven’s astral shores was a “You Are Here” sort of map. A map is organized (i.e. Lawful) and helpful (i.e. Good), so it makes sense. Also notice Shep, Heaven’s answer to Cerebrus. I think I’d like a Heaven of solars, planetars and devas who look like push-over Hallmark card angels – especially when they lay the celestial smack down on the adventurers who – let’s again be honest – are almost certainly up to no good.

King of the Sea

/ jstater / 3 Comments

For those who haven’t heard of Project Rooftop, it’s a nifty website where artists post redesigns for superheroes. I’ll admit that about 9 times out of 10 I prefer the original design for the hero – hey, there’s a reason I play old school rpg’s, have a house filled with old furniture and an iPod filled with old radio shows – my tastes usually run toward the retro. Nonetheless, I love seeing artists being creative and having fun with this sort of thing.

The latest contest at PR involves redesigning Aquaman. I figured I’d post the winning redesign along with some MM! stats of the venerable sea king.

Aquaman and the JLA are, of course, the property of DC Comics and these stats are not an attempt by me to challenge their copyright or trademark or in any way infringe on their rights.

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Other Business

I’m going to try to post the next step in Megacrawl 3000 later today, and tomorrow the February sales report. I’m embarking on the Mu-Pan hexcrawl that will appear in either NOD 8 or NOD 9 (and beyond), so some more fantasy-related material should be showing up on the blog soon. Right now, I’m waiting on my print copy of Ruins & Ronin to arrive, because the rules for the Mu-Pan hexcrawl will be based on that excellent game.

I’m about 75% finished with my third Hexcrawl Chronicle for the Frog God – the first HCC should be in print soon and the second about two months later. I’m about 50% finished with the other big project for the Frog God. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk about it yet, but I suppose people who check out the Frog God website and put one and one together can probably figure out what I’m doing for them.

With a successful MM! playtest out of the way, I think that project is about 90% complete. I still need to write up the sample setting and adventure (based on the playtest, with a few changes) and maybe finalize some editing, add some monsters, do the layout, etc. I think I can probably have it ready to go by late April. I still need to send out a the promised premium to the sponsors, and plan to put that together sometime this week. Playtester Crystal Franklin game me a great idea for some heroes that need to be statted up, and I’ve got a few more off-the-wall ideas along those lines as well, so more to come. Maybe I’ll stage a few fights as well – Herculoids vs. Fantastic Four could be fun.

Final note – PARS FORTUNA officially became profitable last week, to the tune of $0.98. Since then, I sold another copy, so my profits now run over $1.50. Super value menu, here I come!

Busy busy busy, and I feel blessed for it. Have fun on the internet!

Mystery Men! Play Report: OMG vs. The Clown & Brute

/ jstater / 5 Comments

Last night, my little gaming group and I took MM! out for a test drive. I thought it went well, and the feedback was positive. I figured we would play about 4 hours, but the game went long without people completely losing interest (though Rygar did make an entrance that stripped away one of our sorcerers for a few minutes – hey, they guy was a Rygar addict from way back).

So, without further ado, I introduce you to the power and majesty of OMG (decided after the fact to stand for Operating Meta-Human Group). Character creation probably took about thirty minutes, some of which was spent explaining the rules. If there had been a need to create some replacement characters, I suspect it would have gone a bit faster.

 

 

 

There was one other hero – Random by Crystal Franklin – whose character sheet went home with Crystal. I can report that he was a drag queen based loosely on Gambit who could fly and shoot energy bolts.

So, the adventure begins …

5:00 AM, OMG HQ, Imperial State Building: A scan of the internet brings to light a bank robbery in progress (I guess somebody tweeted it). Our brave heroes leap to action.

[Sidebar: When starting your own superhero group, you want to make arrangements for transportation. A new rule (not yet in the Gamma document) replaces money in the game for XP expenditures at character creation and feats of Charisma for later acquisition of goods. It didn’t occur to OMG that they should buy a vehicle at character creation.]

The First National Bank of Shore City is about three blocks away from the Imperial State Building, so the group immediately starts trying to figure out how to get there. Two attempts are made to commandeer a van using feats of charisma, with neither one successful. The sorcerers are hesitant to spend XP from their sorcery pool to teleport, but eventually M Knight teleports himself, Emma Entropy and Nightmare to the bank, letting Anti-Spidey and Random web-swing and fly respectively.

Getting to the bank, our three heroes (yeah, they split the party almost immediately) find that the vault has been cracked using dynamite. Rushing in, they encounter three thugs armed with machine guns. The thugs beat OMG on initiative and open up with their machine guns, with Emma taking a little hit point damage. Nightmare rushes forward and takes a gunman out with his zweihander. M Knight decides to raise a wall of fire to burn them severely (yeah, they’re those kind of heroes), not discounting the fact that Nightmare is in the line of fire. Emma makes an attempt to put her ally into temporal stasis to stop him, but he makes his feat roll and avoids it (yes, they’re fighting each other only 10 minutes into the game – this is par for the course with these guys and I love them for it).

The wall of fire is raised, the thugs take a bit of damage (they make a dexterity feat and take only half damage) and Nightmare does the same. Taken by blood-thirst, Nightmare rushes through the flames and with a single sweep of his sword (made two extra attacks, took a -6 penalty to all three attacks), dispatches two of the remaining robbers and brings the third down to a single hit point. The thug surrenders and, surprisingly, Nightmare doesn’t kill him. In the meantime, M Knight raises a wall of ice on top of the wall of fire, squelching it and creating a fog cloud. Nobody is entirely sure why this is a good plan, since it would give the thugs a chance to hide in the fog, but since Nightmare already has the last thug by the nape of his neck, no harm is done. M Knight is going to want those sorcery XP back later, though.

Having foiled the robbery, OMG does exactly what my players did when they were the Tender Blades and Wyld Stallyns – they walk away, questioning nothing. Most of OMG goes back to their HQ, while M Knight, with the help of a spell of super charisma, goes out and hires a helicopter and pilot. While in HQ, the Referee decides to goose things a bit with a skype from the police commissioner, letting them know that the thugs work for Boss Feeney, notorious crime lord.

[Sidebar: All of the Golden Age sponsors of Mystery Men! will show up in the Shore City setting. Since Tom Feeney is an old friend, his name popped into my head first, so he became a mob boss. The rest of his friends were quite enthused about tracking him down and bringing him to justice]

A plan is hatched – M Knight will cast astral projection on Random and she’ll go check out the home of Boss Feeney to discover his hideout. She makes the trip, but being unable to touch or move anything makes searching difficult. Boss Feeney isn’t home, his butler is sampling the scotch with his wife, and she does check out the contents of his wall safe (ledgers, papers, money, jewels, drugs) and his cellar, with its secret exit. Back home, she reports to the group and they decide to head to police headquarters to look for the location of Boss Feeney’s hideout. With some poking around and a charisma feat by Anti-Spidey, they find a cop on Feeney’s payroll who is willing to lead them to his hideout, located beneath a pool hall.

Once in the pool hall, OMG manages to convince the assembled toughs that they want to join the gang (another charisma feat by Anti-Spidey). Boss Feeney turns out to be harder to convince, and an energy bolt from Random that was meant to scare him instead brings an attack. This time, OMG faces off against Feeney and five thugs with handguns. Anti-Spidey invokes his black tentacles, M Knight turns to his crossbow, Random throws her energy bolts, Nightmare swings his sword, Emma starts throwing around hideous laughter and in the end the thugs are vanquished and Feeney questioned.

Feeney admits he was hired to hit the bank by a big guy with iron gauntlets to cause a distraction. All he knows is that he visited the guy on a boat (The Flying Duck) docked at the marina. OMG heads for the boat in their helicopter and discovers it has departed. Emma (now played by Jessica) uses locate object to track it, and in a few minutes they arrive to find the Flying Duck committing an act of piracy against a larger yacht.

The Flying Duck has thrown a couple of grappling hooks over to the larger yacht and the big guy – notorious super hit man The Brute – along with three thugs and two men in hi-tech armor and carrying swords – are on board, shaking down the owners. The gunmen open up on the helicopter, which takes heavy damage. OMG jumps out and the chopper flees for the city. Emma invokes a cloudkill and takes out one thug and the two swordsmen, while another gunman is downed by Nightmare and M Knight takes out a grapple with his crossbow (hey, it’s a comic book).

The Brute takes a mighty leap back to his boat and Nightmare attempts to follow, but smacks into the boat and drops into the drink. While Anti-Spidey rescues Nightmare with his web power, Random peppers the boat with energy bolts. The Brute cuts the last grapple and, though he takes a energy bolt from Emma using the true strike power, manages to get the Flying Duck underway. OMG checks out the owners of the pirated yacht and find that a large, valuable diamond was stolen. For some reason they don’t give chase in their own yacht, and instead head back to HQ.

Thinking it over, they decide that the diamond is probably going to be used to make a death ray of some sort. Since this is a comic book world, this is actually a reasonable suggestion. Anti-Spidey and Random hit Google, and figures out that the swordsmen are the henchmen for notorious international terrorist The Clown. The police report an hour later that the Flying Duck has been found a few miles away from the city in a wooded area. They’ve canvassed the cabins and found no sign of the Brute or anyone else. Investigating, they find signs that the Brute got into a heavy vehicle and headed for a main highway.

By checking some traffic cameras at the local news station, they determine the Brute was headed back into downtown. A long thinking session follows, and with a little help from the Ref, they ask the police if there have been any crimes lately that might tie into the making of a death ray. Sure enough, a month ago a scientist from some local labs went missing. The administrator of the labs is questioned, and it turns out the scientist was working on harmonic resonances a’ la Tesla’s earthquake machine – for peaceful uses, of course. He made a prototype machine using a large synthetic crystal, but decided he needed a massive gemstone to make it work and, of course, such items are too valuable to expect anyone to lend it for use in an earthquake machine.

So, OMG now knows what they are up against, but they don’t know the target. A visit to the subway control station reveals no sign of the villains on security cameras. The controllers mention that the older, abandoned tunnels don’t have security cameras and that, indeed, they can be found under most of the prime targets in downtown. OMG decides to hit those tunnels and look under the Imperial State Building, where their own headquarters is located, and they get lucky. There, almost finished setting up a new machine, is the Clown, Brute, three swordsmen (enhanced armor, energy swords, force shields) and the kidnapped scientist. A battle erupts, and in the end Anti-Spidey’s black tentacles finally capture the villains while Emma gets the scientist out of harm’s way and M Knight disables the machine. The day is saved and Nightmare and Anti-Spidey come close to death’s door but manage to survive.

XP earned – 1,520 total, about 304 per hero.

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What did we learn?

1. Crystal wishes heroes had a way to develop a signature move. I’ll need to make a more clear reference to using feats to modify powers and develop such moves. Perhaps there can be an optional rule for heroes putting XP toward getting bonuses to make their signature move.

2. We learn that heroes need to put some thought into vehicles and headquarters and maybe henchmen.

3. Sorcerers need to spend XP on powers outside their sorcery pool. Once he was tapped out, M Knight was reduced to shooting a crossbow at things.

4. Likewise, it’s a good idea for everyone in the group to have at least one super ability score. Failed intelligence feats to make connections and find clues and failed charisma feats to acquire items and shake down thugs made it obvious that super abilities are highly useful. This was only highlighted when the super villains, built with 40,000 XP each to give them a fighting chance against the more numerous heroes, came in with more levels. Honestly, the Clown build was sub-optimal as well – his swords were pretty pathetic, while the Brute’s iron claws almost took out Nightmare.

I can think of a few rules tweaks after the game – I think the fly power needs to have a slightly improved speed and I’m pretty certain I’m going to replace Single-Use / Limited / Permanent with One per Day / Three per Day / At Will – easier to keep track of. I might add some more equipment – a communicator of some sort might be nice.

The game was fun, and I think (if I had the time) we’d make a campaign out of it. I think the proof of concept was a success and the game is just about ready to go live. I need to write up the sample setting (Shore City, Boss Feeney, etc) and put a little more work into the sample adventure, but other than that Mystery Men! is on its way!

Thanks to my players for their input and help, and if anyone else out there has play tested the game, please let me know how it went.

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Sketch of M Knight by Danny Roberts. You can see his real artwork HERE.