Original Roleplaying Concepts
Last year I supported the Kickstarter for Christopher Grey's The Great American Witch. It is based on a variant of the Apocalypse World Engine but has a lot of neat features of its own. I thought it might be fun to try a character for this game now. The Game: The Great American Witch
The Great American Witch (GAW) was released last year to much excitement (well on my part certainly). The game is quite a lot of fun, though I have not had the chance to play it as much as I would like, it has become a great resource for some of my other games.
I reviewed the game here, and interviewed the designer Christopher Grey here.
While I continue to be mostly unimpressed by Powered by the Apocalypse games, this one deviates enough from that standard to make it more interesting to me. Plus I do like the character, craft, and coven building material within the book. The coven building, in particular, has been very helpful for my Basic-era War of the Witch Queens game. I can also see it working great for WitchCraft and maybe even WITCH: Fated Souls. The Crafts of GAW could also work out well enough, narratively, as different "Crafts" of the Wicce in WitchCraft.
Still, I see a lot of potential for this game and I am happy I picked it for today's challenge.
The Character: Amy Nakamura
Amy is a character I have used as an NPC in my WitchCraft/Buffy games before but never stated her out. I thought it might be fun to detail her a little more here. Though in previous versions she was a follower of Brigit. This Amy did not become "Brigh daughter of Brigit" instead she became something of a solitary witch looking to protect others on her own. Since my War of the Witch Queens spans the multiverse I am going to say that "Amy" was needed, but instead of Brigh they got this Amy. Or maybe in this world, she is the one that has that needed multiversal connection.
For a lot of reasons that make sense mostly to me, she is a "Craft of Tara" witch, "Coven of the Storm".
Character creation in GAW actually begins with Coven Creation. For this coven I am going to choose the witches I have been featuring this week, Megan, Fiona, Alexandria, and Amy, each pulled from their timelines.
Coven of the Storm
Oath: Use force to enact change
Holy Day: Samhain
Hearth: A hidden building
Connections & Resources: A hideout that cannot be located by natural or supernatural means.
Coven Resources: Few. Witches operate in the mundane world
Staus: Well thought of by those that know.
Mainstream? Witches need to come together.
Mundane? Has value, but not important
Influence: Not well known
Members: Only these characters
Photo by Joy Marino from PexelsAmy Nakamura
Craft of Tara
Mercy -1
Wisdom -1
Severity +2
Maiden: Tara Swift and Heroic
Mother: Blue Tara
Crone: Black Tara
Refuge: Personal Shrine
Background: Family has always practiced the craft
Lifestyle: Spritual activist
Personality: Optimistic and supportive
Relationships
Who helps you keep peace in the coven? Megan
Who is the most volatile and needs the most management? Fiona
Who gives you the strength to confront challenges? Megan and Alexandria
Who confronts challenges for you? Alexandria
Who brings balance to the coven? Megan and Amy
Who brings the coven out of balance: Fiona
Ok! So I have a character here that works great for this game.
Satire on the Leaders of the Roman Catholic Church
The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1629
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Scene of Witchcraft
Allegory of Human Folly, 1629
Witchcraft scene with Saint Anthony on the Sabbath
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
A Witches Sabbath
You'll find more paintings by Cornelis Saftleven previously shared here. An assortment of demon drawings by the artist were previously shared here.
We are getting near the end of this challenge and I find I am sad to see it go. I am going to revisit these characters all at a later date I am sure. Maybe reunite them under one system. Today though I want to go back to a system I really like but rarely get to do anything with. Elizabeth Chaipraditkul's WITCH: Fated Souls.
The Game: WITCH: Fated Souls
WITCH: Fated Souls was part of a very successful Kickstarter and later sales on DriveThruRPG. It shares many of the background features of WitchCraft but in a different way. That will be a theme all this week. WITCH:FS also has "witches" and how they use magic to affect the worlds around them. It is a different take on some of the same ideas and I always find it a joy to read.
I did a lengthy review of the game a while back, and it was part of another Character Challenge where I stated up Thomasin from "The VVitch" in different systems.
The system is pretty easy to learn and is flexible. I prefer WitchCraft in many ways, but that is hardly a fair comparison. There is a lot that WITCH:FS does very well and I do wish I spent more time with it. It is a game that rewards your investment of time to it with the characters becoming more and more interesting as they progress. There is every bit of the same sort of world-building here that happens in WitchCraft or The World of Darkness games. It just needs a GM that will give it the time that it deserves.
The Character: Alexandria
Alexandria has been with me in idea form for a little while. Her concept writ large is a "Tireless Social Justice Witch." She is not afraid to fight for what she believes is right and she doesn't back down.
Also, I always imagined her as looking like Cuban singer Camila Cabello. Why? Because I adore her and I listened to a lot of her music to get the right vibe for this character.
Alexandria is portrayed by Camila CabelloAlexandriaThis is a fun character. I can't wait to see what she has in store.
We are in the last week of this Character Creation Challenge. I wanted to spend this last week on modern games. That is games that take place in modern times. Yesterday was Chill, today I am going to go with what might the game I love more than D&D. C. J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG.The Game: C. J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG
Mere words can't express my love for this game. Though I have tried many, many times. This is the game I come back to. This is the game that hold up as my Gold Standard of Games. Not that it isn't without it's own issues of course, but nothing I can't work around or even with. I have often said I wrote Ghosts of Albion as nothing but a giant love letter to the WitchCraft RPG.
WitchCraft was the game that pulled me back into RPGs. I was ready to give up until I found this game. I have never looked back.
Not only is it a great game with some great supplements, but it is also supremely flexible. There is really nothing I can't do with this game. Add on some of the other "Classic" Unisystem games like All Flesh Must Be Eaten (Zombie survival horror), Armageddon the End Times (Post-apocalypse reckoning), and Conspiracy X 2.0 (Aliens and Government conspiracies) you have an entire world of options. But honestly, the game is perfect as it is.
If you don't believe me, grab the PDF for free from Eden Studios on DriveThruRPG.
The Character: Fiona
Fiona is, or is based on, the character from the opening fiction and she is the "Cover girl" of core rule book. "Head Zombie" George Vasilakos, the CEO of Eden painted that. It is seriously one of the best pieces of art for any gamebook ever.
Fiona is a young witch and maybe, just maybe she is a bit of a stereotype, and she maybe is based a little on Fiona Apple circa 1999.
FionaAttributes
Strength 2
Dexterity 2
Constitution 3
Intelligence 3
Willpower 3
Perception 2
Life Points 36
Endurance Points 29
Speed 10
Essence Pool 20
Channeling Level 1
Qualities / Drawbacks
Gifted (5)
Attractive 2
Hard to Kill 2
Humorless -1
Obsession -2
Photographic Memory 2
Recurring Nightmares -1
Essence Channeling 1 (2)
Increased Essence Pool 1
Skills
Computer 2, Craft (Herbal) 3, Dodge 3, Fine Arts (Painting) 2, Humanities (History) 2, Language (French 2), Magic Theory 3, Occult Knowledge 3, Research 2, Rituals (Wicce) 2, Streetwise 1
Metaphysics
Farsight 2, Insight 2, Lesser Healing 2, Soulfire 2, Shielding 2
I have likely seen hundreds of Unisystem characters over the years. Fiona here is pretty much everyone's starting character. Gifted, Wicce. Weird One is a fun concept and one most gamers can relate to. Marginally better mental stats than physical. Hard to Kill is most often taken. So is Situational Awareness, but I ran out of points in favor of Photographic Memory. Skills are predictable with some point variances here and there. Metaphysics include a couple of utilities, healing, an attack, and a defense. She has French as a language instead of the more "Occulty" Latin, Hebrew or Greek because she is a Wicce, not a Rosicrucian. She seems more like the "spooky goth" witch and not the "crunchy earth child" witch.
Still, she would be fun to play. Let the Chronicler play on those Nightmares. Maybe it is her Farsight while she is sleeping.
Jumping WAY ahead to the future today; at least in terms of the Dark Ages, to the magic time of the 1970s! All my campaigns share a link in one way or another. Adventures like "All Souls Night" may start with D&D or other FRPG, they eventually make their way to "Blight" (Ghosts of Albion) and "The Dark Druid" (Buffy). Spirit of '76 is another good example. It begins, oddly enough, in 1976 and with Chill.The Game: Chill 3rd Edition
Spend any time here and you know I am very fond of Chill. The first edition from Pacesetter came out of Minnesota. Second Edition from Mayfair was right here in the Chicago burbs. Chill is Midwestern horror. Not East Coast horror with it's ancient houses and older bloodlines. Not West Coast horror with new-wave vampires. Nor is it Southern Gothic, while very enjoyable, is not the same.
No Chill is backwoods horror. Old decrepit house horror. Horror found on darkened roads between small towns. The horror I grew up with.
My campaign for Chill was/is my Spirit of '76 game. It was designed as a Chill mini-campaign over 4 days. It was built up while I was playing a lot of WitchCraft and Buffy. The idea was that supernatural occurrences, once rare, were picking up in intensity and frequency the closer we got to the new Millennium. This would later change to 2012 and then 2018 as real-time overtook these "future" events. You can see some of that in my "Generation HEX" Nightworld in NIGHT SHIFT. Originally this was going to be for Chill 2nd Edition, but even that time got away from me so now it is for 3rd Edition. Thankfully the narrative in the new game follows the one I was creating.
The Character: Megan O'Kelly
"Megan" began as "Stephanie" in an older game back when "Spirit of '76" was "Summer of Love" and taking place in 1968. I wanted to keep Stephanie where she was but I wanted to do the Summer of 1976 instead, so Megan was "born." She is a young grad student at UC-Berkeley. I imagined her with long straight hair and wearing bell-bottoms. Something of a post-hippie 70s girl. She called herself a "Craft worker" or a "cleanser" but never a "witch." Her inspirations come from the Eric Clapton song "Bellbottom Blues" and Eliza Roberts from Animal House. I changed the character because I wanted to bring in an older Stephanie at some point but I never did.
Megan is assigned to SAVE in 1976 to help a small band of operatives investigating the rise of supernatural occurrences in the South West to the Deep South.
Megan O'Kelly Attributes (80 pt build)
Agility AGL 50
Strength STR 40
Stamina STA 45
Focus FOC 60
Personality PSY 50
Willpower WRP 55
Dexterity DEX 40
Perception PCN 70
Reflexes REF 55
Sensing the Unknown STU 14
Skills (Specializations)
Movement (T) 50, Long Distance (E)
Prowess (T) 40
Close Quarters Combat 23
Research (T) 60, Academic (E), Occult (B)
Communication (T) 50
Interview 28
Fieldcraft 20
Investigation 35
Ranged Weapons 28
Edges and Drawbacks
Attractive (2), Highly Attuned (1), Naïve (-2)
The Art
Protective School
Disrupt
Sphere of Protection (E), Mental Shield (B)
Sensing School
Clairvoyant (E)
Drive
To Know the Truth
So Megan is a recent UC Berkeley grad. She is a clairvoyant and specializes in seeing ghosts and putting spirits to rest. Her background is psych grad student so her academics are already at Expert (but not yet Master) and she ran track in High School, so she has some athletics, but not a lot. She is still a bit naïve about the world around her but she is not stupid.
Third Edition Chill is really better at PCs learning "The Art" (magic) than previous editions, so I think this version really works out much better than previous incarnations of Megan/Stephanie.
Between October 2003 and October 2013, Chaosium, Inc. published a series of books for Call of Cthulhu under the Miskatonic University Library Association brand. Whether a sourcebook, scenario, anthology, or campaign, each was a showcase for their authors—amateur rather than professional, but fans of Call of Cthulhu nonetheless—to put forward their ideas and share with others. The programme was notable for having launched the writing careers of several authors, but for every Cthulhu Invictus, The Pastores, Primal State, Ripples from Carcosa, and Halloween Horror, there was a Five Go Mad in Egypt, Return of the Ripper, Rise of the Dead, Rise of the Dead II: The Raid, and more...
The Miskatonic University Library Association brand is no more, alas, but what we have in its stead is the Miskatonic Repository, based on the same format as the DM’s Guild for Dungeons & Dragons. It is thus, “...a new way for creators to publish and distribute their own original Call of Cthulhu content including scenarios, settings, spells and more…” To support the endeavours of their creators, Chaosium has provided templates and art packs, both free to use, so that the resulting releases can look and feel as professional as possible. To support the efforts of these contributors, Miskatonic Monday is an occasional series of reviews which will in turn examine an item drawn from the depths of the Miskatonic Repository.
Name: The Posse
Ah! World of Darkness. We have had some great times together. And some not so great. But I never grow tired of picking up a WoD book (new, old, Chronicle, whatever) and seeing what is going on. As you can imagine Mage was a particular favorite of mine. I loved all the lines but Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade was my favorite. Dark Ages: Mage though has a lot going for it though too.
The Game: Dark Ages Mage
As it turns out, Dark Ages: Mage requires you to have Dark Ages: Vampire as opposed to Mage: The Ascension or Mage The Sorcerer's Crusade. That is of course fine, but not what I was expecting for character creation.
Still. This gives the Dark Ages line a sort of continuity that would be both a blessing and curse that the "modern" line did not have and would not have until we get the "New Wolrd of Darkness" in the start of this century. The year is 1230 AD and stuff is bad all over. Dark Ages of the World of Darkness. That's like double dark.
If you have played any of the World of Darkness games then you know what to expect. There are not as many "Traditions" as we will see in Mage, but it does give us a good idea of how they all got here.
Since we are still in the Dark Ages let's do one of the descendants of Lars and Siân.
The Character: Lowis Larsdottir
Lowis is a reincarnation, future incarnation, past-life or something weird and magical in relation to my Larina. I was playing in a WitchCraft game with her and then I also started a Mage: The Ascension game and wanted to play the same character. I decided they were the same, but parallel worlds. This got me on a path where there are many versions of my witch out there and all are more or less aware of the others.
Lowis here has a Welsh first name and a Nordic last name and I suspect she lives on the continent somewhere. Maybe Italy or Austria.
Photo by JJ Jordan from PexelsLowis Larsdottir
Initiate
Nature: Pedagogue
Demeanor: Fanatic
Fellowship: The Old Faith
Cabal: Followers of Aradia
Mentor: Gezzie
Physical
Strength 1
Dexterity 2
Stamina 3
Social
Charisma 3
Manipulation 2
Appearance 3
Mental
Perception 3
Intelligence 3
Wits 4
Talents
Alertness 1, Awareness 2, Empathy 2
Skills
Animal Ken 2, Crafts 3, Herbalism 3, Survival 1
Knowledges
Academics 2, Cosmology 1, Enigmas 2, Hearth Wisdom 3, Linguistics 2, Medicine 1, Occult 3, Theology 1
Backgrounds
Mentor 1, Chantry 2, Familiar 2, Library 3
Foundation (Spontaneity) 2
Pillars
Autumn 3, Spring 1, Summer 2
Lowis is new to the Old Faith. She knows the faith has been handed down over the generations and now she has been awaked to it. As a merchant's daughter, she is afforded some luxuries and can read. She is also a steadfast member of her faith and wants to see it spread. She is not quite "run naked through the woods" but she is getting there.
Out of Time is the first campaign for Tales from the Loop – Roleplaying in the ’80s That Never Was –and quite possibly the last. With Out of Time, Free League Publishing brings the award-winning roleplaying game based on the paintings of Simon Stålenhag to a close. Throughout this alternate childhood of the 1980s, young teenagers have explored rural small-town Sweden, but a rural small-town Sweden in which its streets, woods and fields, and skies and seas are populated by robots, gravitic tractors and freighters, strange sensor devices, and even creatures from the long past. To the inhabitants of this landscape, this is all perfectly normal—at least to the adults. To the children of this landscape, this technology is a thing of fascination, of wonderment, and of the strangeness that often only they can see. In Tales from the Loop, it is often this technology that is the cause of the adventures that the children—the Player Characters—will have away from their mundane, often difficult lives at home and at school. Taking place at the end of the decade, Out of Time takes place over the course of year, but has potential to be something more—and all because the campaign involves time travel…Out of Time begins with a rash of pets and farm animals going missing, followed by flyers asking for information about lost pets going up across the neighbourhood, then rumours of a mechanical contraption seen roaming the fields outside the small communities of the Mälaren Islands. When the Player Characters investigate, they discover the first of many strange experiments taking place, experiments which get stranger and stranger as the campaign progresses. Later, their summer takes a decidedly strange, literally ‘Out of the Body’ turn, which reveals more of the Mystery, before the weather gets randomly worse and storms threaten to shut the region down. Ultimately, to solve the Mystery and even save the world, the Player Characters must sneak out during a lockdown and break into the Facility for Research in High Energy Physics—or ‘The Loop’—the world’s largest particle accelerator, constructed and run by the government agency, Riksenergi. There at last they can discover what links the storms out of nowhere which bring strange mud and sand, the repeated crashes of the magnetrine ship Susi Talvi, the weird flashbacks at their summer camp, and the 1969 moon landing.
The campaigns consists of a trilogy of scenarios—‘The Animal Ark’, ‘Summer Camp’, and ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’. The first takes place just before Christmas, 1988, which only serves to heighten the fractious state of their home lives, but at the same time, there are reports of missing animals, strange devices can be found scattered throughout the area, and a magnetrine ship appears out of a rip in the sky to crash again and again. ‘The Animal Ark’ is quite a short scenario, but does a good job of setting up the campaign, whilst giving the players scope to develop their characters’ home lives. There is advice for the Game Master and suggestions as to what can be added to reflect the heightened anxiety and emotions which seem to occur at Christmas, but many players will have had experiences of their own and can make suggestions of their own too. Essentially setting the scenario at Christmas serves to strengthen the two contrasting strands of a Tales from the Loop game, one being the Game Master presenting the weirdness of its alternative setting and the Mysteries of The Loop, the other being the players exploring the emotional, but mundane complexities of their characters’ home lives.
‘Summer Camp’ moves the time on to the summer of 1989 and the tradition of children being sent to summer camp. Here the Player Characters and other local children are kept busy with a range of outdoor activities, from hut building and gymnastics to orienteering and telling ghost stories round the fire. Things get strange though, when each of the Player Characters wakes up to find that not only is he not in his own body, but he is not in his own time—it is 1969! This presents a challenge for both character and player, as he must negotiate life in an unfamiliar period and negotiate unfamiliar relationships. This is in addition to the ups and downs of life at the summer camp, a strange old man in the woods, and weird dreams… Although replacement characters are provided for the players to roleplay in 1969, one of the options is for the Game Master to create the parents of the Player Characters from back in 1989. Here is a fantastic opportunity for the players to roleplay their characters’ parents and what they were like as children. However, this will take some extra effort upon the part of the Game Master to set up and develop, but the emotional payoff, as the Player Characters realise that their parents had Mysteries of their own to solve and weirdness going on around them just as their children do in 1989, is a great piece of storytelling…
‘The Storm in the Hourglass’ brings the campaign and the 1980s to a close. Set in the autumn of 1989, the storms back in ‘The Animal Ark’ appear again and begin to escalate, forcing the authorities to declare an emergency as the weather worsens. ‘Men in Black’ are seen around the Mälaren Islands as ‘time bubbles’, which when the Player Characters investigate, turn out to be unstable, appear across the region. There are indications too that the technology which has been a fixture of the Player Characters’ childhood is malfunctioning, including the Loop itself. The climax of the campaign will see the Player Characters hopping from time bubble to time bubble and breaking into the Graviton at the heart of the Loop, there to confront their antagonist and the threat she has created.
Of the three scenarios in Out of Time, ‘Summer Camp’ is the longest, mainly because there is a large number of camp activities and events to involve the Player Characters in before anything strange happens. Potentially, this may unbalance the tension between the ordinary and outré strands of a typical Tales from the Loop scenario. Probably the best solution would be for the Game Master to tailor the camp activities and events to the Player Characters to avoid this. As the campaign progresses though, it does grow in complexity, especially in the finale with all of the hopping from time bubble to time bubble.
As a campaign, Out of Time introduces an aspect intrinsically excluded from TTales from the Loop, and that is the potential death of a Player Character. In 1969, the Player Characters are threatened by the campaign’s antagonist with a gun—and she is not afraid to use it. Now in this sequence, it is not as much of an issue, since the Player Characters are not in their bodies, but it highlights the greater peril they face in the campaign. Of course, if the Game Master has decided to port the Player Characters back into their parents, it amplifies the peril, even threatening a Grandfather Paradox should one of the parents be shot and die… Back in 1989, there is the possibility that the Player Characters will fail and unlike in previous scenarios for Tales from the Loop, that has world-ending consequences…
The possibility of the Player Characters facing their death in Out of Time foreshadows another possible option for the campaign, which is to run it as a link between Tales from the Loop and its nineties sequel, Things from the Flood, where death for the Player Characters is a possibility. The authors suggest that the final part, ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’ be shifted forward to 1994 when the ‘Mälarö Leak’ occurred, hot, brown liquid bubbling up out of the ground, forcing an evacuation that would last for years, flooding the Loop, and precipitating to a scandal that would force the Swedish government to shut down Riksenergi and sell the Loop. The advice on this is perhaps somewhat underwritten and it does mean that there is a much longer gap between the events of ‘Summer School’ and ‘The Storm in the Hourglass’, during which time events will have moved out of the framework for Tales from the Loop. However, Out of Time does provide options which would bridge this gap.
The first option is a nonet of ‘Secret Places’, a Mystery Landscape which fits both the 1980s of Tales from the Loop and the 1990s of Things from the Flood. These range from the strange platforms, mechanical marvels, and scrap ships being seen throughout the area of ‘Castle in the Sky’ to the lone concrete foundation with a single hatch which appears having thrust up from the ground in ‘Extra Life’. All of the Mysteries come with an explanation as to the Truth, Hooks, Countdown, and the Antagonist, and can be easily slotted into a Game Master’s campaign or expanded as necessary. The second option is ‘The Mystery Machine’, a set of tables for inspiring and generating Mysteries of the Game Master’s own design, whilst the third, ‘The Mix-CD of Mysteries’ presents an octuple of Mysteries based on eight classic CD tracks from the nineties, such as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Pulp’s Common People. Again, these come with an explanation as to the Truth, Hooks, Countdown, and the Antagonist, and can be easily slotted into a Game Master’s campaign or expanded as necessary. Again, just like the Mystery Landscape of ‘Secret Places’, they will need some development upon the part of the Game Master. However, most of the tracks listed come from the mid to late nineties and so thematically, do not quite bridge the gap between Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood as well as a wider selection might do. In many cases, the mature nature of the lyrics and the Mysteries they inspire better suit the nineties and thus Things from the Flood than they do Tales from the Loop. Nevertheless, thematically they can be used to foreshadow the nineties and events of Things from the Flood and of course, inspire the Game Master to write her own using other lyrics.
Physically, Out of Time is as well presented as you would expect for a Tales from the Loop title. Of course, it highlights Simon Stålenhag’s fantastic artwork, but the writing is also good and the layout is clean, tidy, and accessible. All three scenarios follow the same format, making them easy to access and relatively easy to run.
It is great to finally have a campaign for Tales from the Loop, even if it is bringing the decade and the roleplaying game to a close. It should be no surprise that the campaign is challenging given it involves time travel, and although the plot is given a clear diagram for the Game Master to follow, it is complex and will require her to read through the plot with some care. With that preparation, Out of Time is a fantastic campaign, presenting the Player Characters with a challenging and enjoyably complex mystery, a mystery which brings Tales from the Loop to the conclusion it deserves.
We have all had this one on our shelves at one point or saw it in the book stores and thought to ourselves, "wow I should REALLY do something with that one day."Today is that day. I am going to make a character for Bruce Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming.
The Game: Fantasy Wargaming
There is a lot to unpack here. Not just in terms of the game itself, but the history of the game. There is no way I could provide a good review of it for this particular post. I am not even sure I want to try. For starters, there is such a disdain for RPGs in this book and for D&D in particular. I would call it a Fantasy Heartbreaker, but it never lets you get close enough to it to break your heart.
So instead I am going to defer to the experts here. They have spent more time on this that I will or ever will. Plus my copy is so musty it is giving me a headache and it is still four feet away from me as I type this.
Again, given the musty state of my book, I am going to refer to these sites often in my character creation. G.L. Dearman's site in particular has some good character sheets.
The game does cover witches and witchcraft, all be it in a roundabout manner.
Few questions in anthropology have raised as much controversy as the nature of witchcraft. There are three quite separate views of the witch-the peasant magician, the pagan, and the devil worshipper. Fantasy Wargaming accepts all three as valid. Witches clearly exercised magic. and not just Supernatural powers by appeal Equally, the theory of a surviving pre-Christian Celtic fertility cult bas some force. Some ritual elements, notably the sacred dance and orgy, appear at the very beginning of the period, before diabolism bad really taken root. There are echoes of Bacchic revels, and of Diana's Wild Hunt.Well, that works for me. I can use this.
For the character, I was hoping to make a Satanic witch. Would have been great for the Satanic Panic call-back to when was made. But I opted for today's date as her birthday and that made her Aquarius. And I have a perfect Aquarian Witch.
The Character: Marie Capet
Marie is another quasi-mythical character from my games. I know that she was most active in the year 1012 AD. Marie is also an Aquarian Tradition witch from my first Basic-era book of witches which, in a few thousand years, will become the Sisterhood of the Aquarian Order. In later years she would have been called a neo-pagan. Margaret Murry would have embraced her. As my prototype Aquarian, Marie sees no problem with grabbing what ever bits of esoteric knowledge comes her way. To the Church, this makes her little better than a heretic and at worst, a follower of Lucifer. She actually feels that Lucifer has been mischaracterized by the Church and that as "The Light Bringer" he is more of a Promethean-like figure. She is doing what she can to bring on the next Age of Mankind. This would not be known as the Aquarian Age, or the New Age, until much later on.
Given the rolls, I figure she was the 2nd daughter of a poor noble. She was going to go into the nunery but instead ended up marrying the Baron that her sister was supposed to marry. She was married at age 14, so she has a couple of children (that survived) now by age 21. She has a level in Religious and a level in Magic as a Witch. I assume she is discovering witchcraft from an Italian ladies' maid who knows of the "old ways."
Marie CapetStar Sign: Aquarius
Ability Scores (adjusted for Star Sign)
Physique: 1110
Agility: 12
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 18
Faith: 1416
Charisma: 1213
Greed: 89
Selfishness: 13
Lust: 12
Bravery: 12
Social Class: 17
Height: 5'3" Weight: 110lbs
Current Agility: 12
Literate: Yes
Speaks: Frankish, Latin, German
Chance to Speak Language: 60%
Leadership: 15
Birthrank: Second Daughter
Father's Social Position: Poor Baron (16)
Husband's Social Position: Rich Baron (17)
Misc. Traits: Paranoia
It is the Paranoia that helped me figure out she was learning her witchcraft on the sly. Given the time and the culture, I thought an Italian Strega might be the best bet. Maybe someone with a direct connection to Aradia.
I did not pick and spells or rituals. This game is crazy. But there are a few ideas I want to use from it.
The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day is a scenario for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition. Published by Stygian Fox Publishing, it is the second release from the publisher as part of its Patreon programme. The scenario is a missing persons case—that of a child at a detention and rehabilitation centre for youth offenders—which takes the Investigators to Michigan state’s Upper Peninsula and deep into the Hiawatha National Forest where they will confront ancient gods and the pernicious influence of the Mythos, all hiding behind a façade of corporate greed and child rehabilitation. The set-up of the scenario means that The Dark Forest could easily be run using Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game as it can Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, although it introduces an agency of its own, The Advocacy, an independent consultancy which takes U.S. government contracts and investigates unusual events. However, the scenario does carry a ‘Contains Explicit Content’ warning and the advice that some players might find its mature themes disturbing, dealing as it does rape, molestation, and institutional violence against defenceless teenagers. The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day begins with the Investigators being contacted by Martina Love. Her son, Donte, is nearing the end of his sentence at the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys in Michigan state’s Upper Peninsula, but she has not heard anything from him, the staff say that he is at an external facility, and she is becoming increasingly worried. She asks the Investigators to find her son for her, but when the Investigators begin to make enquiries, they quickly learn that the youth correctional facility is currently in lockdown because several of the boys have absconded. All this and more will need to be determined before the Investigators arrive in northern Michigan, where the mobile phone network is unpredictable and connection to the Internet even worse. Beyond this however, there is relatively little to be learned through the research methods traditional to Lovecraftian investigative roleplay and consequently, the scenario has just the single handout. An alternative set-up for The Dark Forest is to have the Investigators be teachers at the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys. This is a stronger set-up if the Keeper wants to run the scenario as a one-shot, but does require the Keeper to prepare and present a lot of information that the teachers would know upfront because they work at the facility, rather than delivering them piece by piece as Investigators coming from the outside conduct their enquiries.
Once the Investigators get to Hiawatha Township and the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys, the investigation takes place in three stages—interviews at the prison, at the prison’s work camps where the boys undergo vocational training for life beyond their sentence, and with the prison’s de facto warden, Bill Nelson. The Investigators are likely discover that the staff and inmates have grown used to the oddities of life in and around the Hiawatha National Forest, and are not necessarily hiding anything sinister, but simply corrupt. (Well, the scenario is set in a privatised prison system after all.) A radically transformative and horrid encounter with one of the missing boys definitely points to the former though, that is, if the Investigators survive the encounter, as it comes at a moment when they are unaware of what is to come and thus unprepared. The scenario does not deal with the fallout from this, but it will point towards something going on deep in the forest.
Initially, there is an ethereal feel to the Investigators’ incursions into the forest, but as their search for answers continues and takes them it deeper and deeper, the feel becomes darker and darker, as well as literally as the foliage and canopy thickens, and the light fades… Ultimately, the Investigators will confront the evil at the heart of the scenario, a confrontation which will take them into the Finnish equivalent of the ‘Upside Down’. The change from the here to the ‘Upside Down’ is nicely handled, but the confrontation itself, although climatic, is one note—a fight. No other means of defeating the threat are suggested and the likelihood is that the antagonist will defeat the Investigators unless they are forewarned and thus well-armed. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily likely since Investigators do not have the opportunity to learn very much about what it is that they are facing, and less so if the Investigators are teachers at the P.J. Nelson Training School for Boys. The advice is that the Keeper should allow the Investigators to retreat and make a plan, before coming back to face the threat. Notably, at the end of the scenario, there is a Sanity reward for retreating from the threat, which is only slightly less than for defeating it.
Physically, The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day needs an editor.
Yet in other ways, The Dark Forest is a superbly presented book. It is done in quite a rich palette of earthy colours and the artwork is, for the most part, excellent. Besides the absence of editing, the book could have been better organised in places, but that is something that the Keeper can easily adjust to.
As interesting as The Dark Forest is in reinterpreting the forces and influence of the Mythos through another mythology and pantheon, that of Finnish myths of the Kalevala, the execution is ultimately underwhelming. The Investigators are never quite able to prepare for, or understand, what they will face in the Finnish equivalent of the ‘Upside Down’, and the singular solution of violence is disappointing. The Dark Forest – A Call of Cthulhu Scenario Set in the Modern Day starts strong with an intriguing mystery and its presentation of mature themes is well-handled and there are some creepy scenes, but its dénouement leaves much to be desired.
Woman Of The Apocalypse 
Saint Michael Fighting The Dragon 
The Four Horsemen 
Angel With The Key Of The Bottomless Pit 
Saint John Devouring The Book 
Seven Angels With The Trumpets 
Beast With Two Horns Like A Lamb 
Adoration Of The Lamb 
Martydom Of Saint John 
Opening Of The Fifth And Sixth Seals 
Saint John Before God And The Elders 
Whore of Babylon 
Four Avenging Angels 
Four Angels Holding The Winds 
Harrowing of Hell, from the Engraved Passion series (1512), Hand-coloured by Hans Mack, 1585 
Harrowing of Hell, from the Engraved Passion series, 1512 
Today is part 2 of my two-part character creation. Yesterday I re-introduced you all to Siân ferch Modron and the game Keltia. Today is her soon-to-be husband, if they don't kill each other first, Lars son of Nicholas from the RPG Yggdrasill.The Game: Yggdrasill
Like Keltia, Yggdrasill is from the French publisher Le 7ème Cercle (The 7th Circle) and was published in English first by Cubicle 7. Now it is published in English exclusively by Le 7ème Cercle. The games have a lot of similarities in rules and in tone, so using them together is expected really. The production values for Yggdrasill are higher, with full-color pages and a stylized character sheet, and it leads me to believe it was the newer game. However, the publication date of it is 2009 and Keltia is 2012.
Yggdrasill is, as you might imagine, a game of the Epic Sagas of the Vikings and Norsemen. I do have to point out that "Viking" is not a group of people but rather describes what they do. It is handy for describing the era though, 800 AD to 1100AD or so. Already we are talking about a time period later than what we see in Keltia which is usually depicted in the 100AD to 500AD era. This works out well for me since I would want to play in a time that is an overlap of the eras; the end of the Druids and the rise of the Saxons, Angles, Jutes, and, well yes, the Vikings. Maybe there was a time when Northmen raiders came ashore to Ireland or Wales and encountered Druids. Maybe not. That is why we have games.
Also like Keltia, there is a TON here that I could use with Troll Lords' Codex Nordica and visa versa. All four books combined? Now there is a campaign worth playing!
I have to admit one of the reasons I was drawn to both of these games was that the art for the Volva (witch) archetype, reminded me so much of Larina.
The Character: Lars son of Nicholas
Lars got his start a little bit before Siân did. Lars' name of course was easy, I knew my witch Larina was named after her father because of the red hair they both share. Nicholas, or sometimes Nichols, was named for a professor I had at the beginning of my Ph.D. studies. I imagined him as a traveling scholar, from somewhere far away, maybe in the North. His travels brought him to a new land where everything was the most verdant green as far as the eyes could see. He was born a Northman, but he was an Irishman in his heart. The rest came easy.
In this version, Lars came to Cymru (Wales) while traveling on a ship. He was to sole survivor of a shipwreck. He was to be sacrificed but his ability to play the harp showing he was a Bard (Skald in his world) saved him.
Lars son of NicholsLars NicholasonRunes: Ansuz+, Perth+, Mathr-
Gifts: Initiate (Galdr), Scholar
Weakness: Curious
BODY
Strength: 2
Vigor: 2
Agility: 2
MIND
Intellect: 2
Perception: 2
Tenacity: 2
SOUL
Charisma: 2
Instinct: 3
Communication: 2
Reaction: 6
Physical Defense: 6
Mental Defense: 7
Move: 4
Enc: 4
HP: 37
Furor Pool: 6
Skills
Art (Skaldic) 7, Eloquence 7, Languages (Norse, Brythonic) 2, Sagas 7
Galdr 7
Long Weapons 3
Incantations
Illusion: Hearing (3), Sight (6)
Charms: Sleep (3)
Like Keltia there is a LOT to go with here.
While reading over this I just HAVE to make a Finnish Volva/Witch of Tasha/Iggwilv. That would be a lot of fun.
It has been almost thirty-five years since the publisher of Britain’s longest running Science Fiction comic, 2000 AD, dabbled in the field of roleplaying. Both times, it was with solo adventure books, first with the Diceman comic, and then with You are Maggie Thatcher: a dole-playing game, but that changes with the initial release of a new publication from Rebellion. This is Adventure Presents, essentially a complete roleplaying game and scenario in a magazine format. The first issue is Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror, from the designers of Spire: The City Must Fall. This consists of a simple roleplaying game and a full, three-session scenario designed for up to six players and the Game Master for which everyone will need three six-sided dice and some pencils. The Game Master will need to do some careful preparation, but Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror comes with everything necessary to play—six ready-to-play pregenerated Player Characters, a handful of NPCs, and some absolutely gorgeous cartography and art.The setting for Tartarus Gate is the year 2130. For years, Earth has been dominated by the OBOL Corporation and in search of a better future—or at least proper employment, the Player Characters have taken positions as unpaid interns aboard the transport ship Charon, entrusted with shepherding cargo from Earth to the Tartarus Gate Waystation. Six months into the journey, they are awoken from their Deep Sleep Pods and after recovering from the process, they are given their first task. Visual feeds from the lower decks have gone down, but before they did, the computers registered that something was moving. All the interns have to do is descend to the lower decks, restore the visual feeds, and ensure that there is nothing moving down there that there should not be… The Charon is six months’ travel from the nearest help, so it is down to the interns. With luck, they can impress their employer and make their temporary employment permanent.
The format of Tartarus Gate is important. The centre twenty-two pages are intended to be pulled out. They start with the six four-page character sheets, each of which includes a briefing, the character description, equipment list, and deck plans of the Charon. Then they followed by the various map handouts, all done in three dimensions and full colour, the four-page explanation of the rules for Tartarus Gate, and the eight-page GM Reference Book. This leaves the other twenty-two pages of Tartarus Gate devoted to the actual scenario.
A character or intern in Tartarus Gate is simply defined. He has four Abilities—Toughness, Agility, Smarts, and Wits—each ranging in value between one and four. He has a value for his Health and his Resolve—his willpower, the former as high as twenty, the latter as high as twelve. He also has three Drives, for example, Hasty, Selfless, and Haunted. Each character has a background and a given role, such as Veteran or True Believer, and an excellent illustration. It is left up to the player to name the character.
Mechanically, Tartarus Gate is simple and straightforward, its key mechanic, known as the ‘Adventure system’, best described as ‘roll three and keep two’—mostly. For his character to undertake an action, a player rolls three six-sided dice and removes one die. Which die depends upon the rating of the Ability being tested. If the Ability has a value of one, the highest die value is removed; if two, the die with the middle value is removed; if three, the lowest die value is removed; and if four, no die is removed, and all are counted. Either way, the total value of the remaining dice needs to equal or exceed the value of a Target Number to succeed, the Target Numbers ranging from six or doable to twelve or extremely difficult. The Game Master can adjust the difficulty of a task by temporarily increasing or lowering the Player Character’s Ability value. A supporting Player Character can help another and so temporarily increase the supported Player Character’s Ability, whilst the acting Player Character can spend Resolve to also increase his Ability value. Resolve can be regained by a Player Character pursuing one or more of his Drives and in Tartarus Gate, and may be reset at the beginning of some chapters, as can Health.
Combat in Tartarus Gate consists of opposed rolls. The lower roll is subtracted from the higher roll and the remaining value deducted from the losing combatant’s Toughness. Combat is designed—much like the rules in general—to be fast and in the case of combat, potentially deadly.
Tarsus Gate as a scenario is broken down into three chapters. In the first chapter, the Player Characters will waken from their Deep Sleep Pods and put through their paces as a ‘recovery process’, much like the first though steps of a video game as a player is taught the controls and what each button does. Given their assignment by Assisti, the ship’s AI, they make their way to the engine room and there they have their first and then second strange encounter—the former with a bloodless, mangled corpse, the latter with a figure from Earth’s recent and wrought past… This figure will come to dominate the mystery which lies in the bowels of the Charon and will be revealed as the Player Characters moves from one chapter to the next.
It should be no surprise that the plot and structure to Tartarus Gate is linear. After all, the Player Characters have been tasked with going from one end of a spaceship to another and the scenario is quite short. However, there is still plenty for them to do and explore, and interact with the handful of NPCs the Game Master has to portray. As well as the detailed NPCs to run, the Game Master also has events to throw at the Player Characters in every location.
The chapter breaks are also used as moments of reflection, for the players to check how the game is going and perhaps a chance for them to change their characters’ Drives if necessary. Tartarus Gate also makes clear that its play is meant to be fun—for everyone, and that if anyone is made uncomfortable, then he should raise his hand and say so.
Physically, Tartarus Gate is very nicely presented. It is well written, but what really stands out is the artwork—which is as good as you would expect from a publisher which puts out 2000 AD each week. If the illustrations are good, then the maps are even better. Overall, the production values, for what is just a ‘magazine roleplaying game’ are stunning.
Adventure Presents Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror is intended as a first roleplaying game and for the most part succeeds. Its combination of a simple, straightforward plot, set-up, and quick mechanics certainly supports that, as does the vibrantly exciting presentation. However, whilst it works as a first roleplaying game for those new to roleplaying, it is a slightly different matter for the prospective Game Master. If the Game Master has played a roleplaying game or two before, then not as much of an issue, but if the Game Master is coming to this totally anew, it will be more difficult for her. For the experienced Game Master, readying and running Tartarus Gate is relatively easy.
Adventure Presents Tartarus Gate – A Roleplaying Game of Sci-Fi Horror is an impressive first issue, an attractive package that is easy to pick up, prepare, and run—it could be done in thirty minutes!
You can read about the challenge here: http://tardiscaptain.com/gaming/character-creation-challenge/
I don’t have an interesting backstory for this character. Probably because I didn’t randomly roll them up. When I create a character randomly I’m usually get inspiration during the process. This character is simply an exercise to see how far I can push various abilities within the V&V system. For this character I chose Shaping. Shaping allows a character to create and/or shape and manipulate a form of matter–in this case, steel. The interesting part to me is that these ‘Shapes’ can be given their own Abilities and can receive Actions during combat. There were a few hurdles to overcome to make this interesting and effective. Firstly, to give an Action to a Shape you have to have one. I want Fabri-Kate to be able to manipulate multiple shapes, so I gave her Super Speed which grants extra Actions each Turn. Shaping also requires Line of Sight to your Shapes or they dissipate. To counter this handicap I chose Heightened Senses: ‘Global Vision’ so that Kate can see 360 degrees around themself. Lastly, Shaping is extremely Power hungry, so I chose Energy which grants increased Power which is the resource characters use to fuel their Abilities. The rest of the Abilities are chosen for protection. Meet ‘Fabri-Kate’.
Fabri-Kate, mistress of fabrication–naturally.
So how does Fabri-Kate fight? They animate their steel spheres granting them the Flight, Laser, and Flash Abilities. They can move about, shoot, and emit blinding flashes of light to temporarily blind foes. Kate can also use Shaping on her suit of armor to use these Abilities., but prefers to let the little spheres of death do it. I keep thinking this character would be a lot of fun to draw, but never seem to get around to it.
