Reading, Planning, and Writing: Beautiful Spring Friday with Aggressive Pollen

Reading: I just finished Red Country and enjoyed the hell out of it. Now I’m reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and it is making long subway rides fly on be.

Planning: Gaming tonight, training tomorrow in the early afternoon and then meeting my mom for a meal and enjoying a beautiful day in NYC. Sunday we will get our Sagas of the Icelanders on at last.

Writing: I’m writing up our Dungeon World game as a short story, a process that makes me feel like an even bigger dork than usual but it is good fun.

And you?

All-New Marvel Heroic Role-Playing Milestones

I just got done catching up on All-New X-Men on Slimjim (the name of my iPad).

I love what Bendis is doing in All-New X-Men #1-11. Long Story Short: Beast went back in time and brought the original 5 X-Men to the present, where they have to deal with the crazy world the mutants currently live in. It is an amazing plotline and one that could be done with any number of Marvel super-heroes, take your pick, the milestones below are general enough.

Imagine doing this with the Avengers or home-made heroes who suddenly have a future that you get to make up through play. Cool stuff.

Have fun, let me know how it goes.

Out of Time
Maps on my phone?
1XP When you interact with a piece of technology that was not around in your native timeline.

3XP When you you use a modern piece of information or slang in an odd or even correct way.

10XP When you either make peace with this timeline as your new home or become a bitter curmudgeon, refusing to acknowledge the new world around you.

Ashes
“How did I die?” “Which time?”
1XP When you unearth clues about your team’s past history.

3XP When you use something you did or done to you as an excuse to get into a conflict.

10XP When you either make an epic gesture in order to break away from your past self and become someone knew or fall into the same mistakes of your past self, repeating history.

Professor K
I’m a fierce competitor you sexist twit!
1XP When you bark an order at the pastlings.

3XP When you enter into a conflict with or alongside the team and teach them something in the process.

10XP When you either stay with the team until they become capable of leading themselves in the dangerous world or send them back to their time and end this farce.

Blue and Young
What is that handsome young man doing?
1XP When you team up with your future self.

3XP When you create an asset for your future self to use or get into a conflict with your future self.

10XP When you either welcome your future self into your life as a chronal sibling or decide that your interactions are unnatural and dangerous to the timestream, cutting off contact with them completely.

Sins of the Future
But I didn’t do that.
1XP When you discuss things your future self has done that have effected the world.

3XP When you get into a conflict because of history you have not yet lived.

10XP When you either decide that your future self was right to do what he did or destroy your future self once and for all.

Can’t Let Go
That is just what you said before.
1XP When you show your disgust at one of the pastlings for their future self’s actions.

3XP When you go into battle with or against a pastling whose future self you despise.

10XP When you either accept a pastling as a new person or do them trauma, hoping to change the past through destruction.

Post-Script: But Judd, MRH is dead! MW lost the license and now it is time to rip open the game’s corpse and do a post-mortem, figuring out what went wrong.

Alright, let’s talk. The truth is, we won’t know what happened until Cam is good and ready to sit down with someone and a recording device and talks about what actually happened. Until then we are barking at the moon. He might never be ready or be too busy making more awesome stuff to bother.

Either way, a game is dead when the players decide, not the gaming companies, not the IP owners, not yahoos on the internet. The game is dead when no one on the earth is playing it or making up cool shit to do with it or learning from its design.

I say it is alive and I say it as a player, as someone who enjoys making up fantastic things and posting them for others to use.

The lonely fronts after a Dungeon World one-shot

The one shot from this past weekend is over but I wanted to make some fronts to pass time during the commute and learn the in’s and out’s of DW.

**Front: The Empire of the All-Seeing Sun**

Cast: God-Emperor, General of the Sun’s Own Army, Gladiators, Rebels, Unconquered Savages, Common Sun-state Citizens, Dead Sea Cabal Necromancers

Stakes:

Will the God Emperor become undead?

Will the God-Emperor pass on his All-Seeing Power?

Will the Empire take over the world?

Will the savages destroy this empire and deficate in its ashes?

*Danger: Dead Sun Cabal*

Type: Ambitious Organization

Impending Doom: Usurpation

Grim Portents: Gain God Emperor’s favor

Steal moonstone from the consort’s cult.

Gain Iron Liche’s artifacts for their own use.

*Danger: God Emperor of the All-Seeing Sun*

Type: Arcane Enemy

Impending Doom: Tyranny

Grim Portents: Gathers worthy predessessors to his palace.

Gathers unholy texts regarding undead transitioning.

Leads armies against enemies.

Leads diplomacy, helping his enemy’s enemies.

*Danger: Moon Consort’s Cult*

Type: Ambitious Organization

Impending Doom: Chaos

Grim Portents: Friends replaced by shape-shifters from the moon cult.

God Emperor is assassinated.

Dead Sun Cabal’s efforts are harried.

Werewolf plague!

*Danger: Northern Savages*

Type: Hordes

Impending Doom: Chaos

Grim Portents: Giant-moot!

Raids on the empire’s borders.

Fall of a prominent Imperial holding.

Death seen, riding a polar bear towards the Empire’s capital.

Fall of the All-Seeing Sun Empire.

**Front: Revenge of the Iron Lich**

Cast: Iron Lich, Steampunk Undead, Power Hungry Wizards

Stakes:

Will the Iron Liche rebuilt his towers crypts and charnel factories?

Will the Iron Lich take over the 1000 Road Republic?

Will someone be possessed by an Iron Lich body part/artifact?

*Danger: Dead Sun Cabal*

Type: Ambitious Organization

Impending Doom: Usurpation

Grim Portents:

Sends agents to steal Iron Lich’s shit.

Sends a spy to watch adventurers.

Member betrays cabal for promises of power and immortality.

*Danger: Undead Hordes*

Type: Hordes (duh)

Grim Portents:

Known town is over-run.

Crypts are ransacked.

Smiths kidnapped to create lightning ghoul’s harnesses.

*Danger: The Iron Lich*

Type: Arcane Enemy

Grim Portents: Sacking places important from the lich’s living days.

Domination over death cults and inventors.

Hand re-built.

No longer a towerless wanderer, but a force to be reckoned with.

*Danger: Ocean God’s Wrath (they threw the Iron Lich’s hand into the ocean, y’see)*

Type: Planar Force

Impending Doom: Destruction

Grim Portents: Flooding, storms, etc.

Sea’s minions kidnap wizards and sages.

Sea Monsters attack coastal towns.

The Flood

Rafferty and the City of Dreams/City of Thieves/the Dragon’s City

From this BW forum post:

“I am going to be the first arch-mage in a long while. I’m really good and history will remember me but they should be writing about you. You change the world. We’re only here because of your idea about the sausages and Pyre should be thanking you for keeping Lord Harlow alive…we’d have 3 Gates knocking down our walls. I would have left those poor village girls to their fate without you shaming me into it. I’m a good sorcerer but you, Raff, you are going to be great.”

Dungeon World: Visiting the Indigo Galleon with a Druid and a Barbarian

Mike was in town for the weekend, so it seemed like a good time to take out the shiny new Dungeon World tome and put it to use. I printed out the character sheets, along with the Barbarian, dropped them all on the table and Janaki and Mike chose their characters while I quickly skimmed The Indigo Galleon.

The skim reading meant I got the basic idea but got many of the details wrong, which turned out to be fine. My Captain-Senator was also a necromancer, with an Imperial Spellbook chained to his breastplate and he marched into town with a squad of 8 Imperial soldiers.

Janaki chose the Barbarian and Mike took a Druid. I adore how fast these AW-derived games steam through chargen while still providing lots of evocative details for the table to dig into.

Priscilla Foehammer and Nigel of the Stinking Mire had just gotten back from the Tomb of the Iron Liche. I asked Priscilla what she was attempting to destroy in the tomb.

“The Iron Liche.”

She rolled her Strength, got 7-9, so I told her that their battle brought down the tombs and gravely wounded the Iron Liche but she was not able to confirm the kill as he slid into a seemlingly bottomless shaft as the stones fell all around them.

I asked Nigel what he wanted to understand in the Tombs and he was seeking out the mysteries of the Iron Liche’s magics and he failed that roll, meaning that he had a hand of the Iron Liche, metal bones, rusted cogs and steam-powered exoskeleton, secreted in his bag like some kind of precious secret.

The adventure is a big glorious mess and it hit a hiccup when Priscilla died fighting some marauders in the abandoned dwarven mines. Rolling a 7 on her Last Breath move (thanks to her Barbarian move that gives her +1 on Last Breath) she confronted death, who looked kind of like one of the White Walkers from Game of Thrones, only he rode a polar bear. Death told Priscilla that she had to kill the necromantic Captain-Senator and stake his head in a high place with her name runes carved into his face.

This is when things got crazy. They rested up and healed for a day and then Priscilla called the imperial senator-captain/necromancer out and confronted him and his soldiers. Nigel turned into a War Elephant (straining the limitations of being able to turn into a domesticated animal) and stampeded the soldiers while the Foehammer cut off the necromancer’s hand and then head while holding on with 1 hit point left.

In the end, after a few more rolls and shenanigans, Nigel had secretly fastened the liche-hand onto his own hand (why do hands always figure prominently into my DW games…Vecna envy?) and was about to summon the Octopus God of the octopus folk so that he could turn the world into a swamp. Priscilla’s questioning of his actions caused him to hesitate and cut off the fell hand of the Iron Liche.

This game came very close to being Moby Dick and the Barbarian vs. Cthulhu but it didn’t get down that road. Nigel leveled up and Priscilla is 1 XP shy of 2nd level. I love the way XP works in this game now, love it to bits.

Pirates, chtonic deties, imperial necromancers, imperial necromancer’s head on a spear in the middle of a small fishing village by a glory-hungry barbarian, shape-changing into an alligator, a poisonous snake and a whale…it was a fine night of gaming.

Looking at their Bonds, Nigel realized that the danger the spirits warned him was following Priscilla Foehammer was actually him. Good stuff.

Welcome to Dis, letters to get started.

A Story Games Thread:

Ill-Met in Waterdeep

Dear Prime Newb Whose Home is still Digesting in Dis’ Guts,

Welcome to Dis.

You have what you could carry from your home and need to find some scratch so that you don’t have to sleep out under the alien stars.

Sure, this isn’t your first rodeo and you had plenty of adventures back at home but now you are in Dis. The trappings are familiar but the context is entirely new. Now you are all small fish in an ever-expanding pond that is constantly devouring other ponds.

Someone among you took the lead in getting you to Dis alive. Have that one roll +Int.

On a 10+, you either got out with a really amazing artifact or know someone in Dis who can help you settle in a bit.

On a 7-9, you have some remnant of your old world that isn’t immediately useful but you could sell it for 3d6 silver if you don’t mind it becoming a curio in a local parish’s shop window.

On a miss, trouble from the old world has followed you here.

There is a place for rent here in the Vecna Parish that has something that reminds you of the City of Splendors. Sure, all of the architecture seems to be littered with eyes and hands but something about this joint feels like home, dammit. Explain to the GM why you want to rent that place so badly. The owner, a one-eyed recovering wizard (recovering?), likes the idea of renting to new refugees, as it reminds him of when he first got here, fresh from Greyhawk City.

Chunks of your world are still floating on the top of the stew that is Dis. When your GM rolls on the job table, he will insert an element of the Forgotten Realms as either the Patron, Target or Job Type. The GM could describe a job and ask you what about that job is actually a piece of the Realms and how your character recognizes it.

The one-eyed former death cult wizard will hold the space for you for a few days while you do some honest or dishonest freebooting.

Hugs & Kisses,

Your GM

Please come to the thread and play along.

Marvel Heroic Role-Playing: Hawkguy Milestones

Bro, the above pic is by David Aja with words by Matt Fraction and bro, it was pasted with the utmost respect, bro.

Bro
1 XP when you take on the speech quirks of your enemies.

3 XP when you take stress from a conflict with a gang, crowd or horde of bros.

10 XP when you either trace the goons to their bro, er, I mean, boss or ignore them and go after bigger fish, bro.

Hawkeyes
1 XP when you refer to your partner as Hawkeye.

3 XP when you create an asset that allows your partner, Hawkeye, show off their mad skills.

10 XP when you either get into a romantic entanglement with your fellow Hawkeye or make a conscious decision to keep this Moonlighting-ish sexual tension thing going and never mess it up your chemistry like they messed up that show.

Hawkguy
1 XP when you just do normal stuff like normal people do.

3 XP when you manage to add a mundane, down-to-earth comment amidst crazy Avengers crap.

10 XP when you either take a break from Avengers crap to concentrate on being the ‘guy or make peace with the crazy back and forth that is your life.

Digital Immigrant Old Guy
1 XP when you say or do something that shows that you were born in the 70′s and thus no longer young, hip or cool.

3 XP when you do something that is cool.

10 XP when you either learn something from a digital native that will change something on your character sheet or become even more of a hovering-around-40 curmudgeon.