Original Roleplaying Concepts
Warplanning and Intelligence units have complied with a request from the Secretary to the Consul and developed an inventory of warfare related assets of the Freestate. It's an important document, and will guide the parameters of the modernization program. Now for a long stretch out and some hot tea...
In the ecologically ravaged future, twelve billion people live on Earth in environmentally sealed kilometre high city blocks clustered around ‘lungs’, the colossal city-sized atmosphere processors located on the coasts. They grow and process the algae that provides humanity with air, and eventually, food. Life is about surviving, but there is a way to make it better—work in space. Sign up to crew the service vessels maintaining stations, outposts, and mines in other star systems; the tugboats hauling the refineries back to Earth; the Arbiter ships as Colonial Marshals investigating crimes on behalf of the Interstellar Department of Trading; as military units preventing (or even conducting) civil unrest or hostile takeovers; as scientific survey teams; or as Deep Space Support Teams—DSSTs, or ‘Dusters’, effectively serving as troubleshooters for their employers. Last twenty-five years and you get to retire to a life of luxury. However, it is not that easy… Space travel takes time. Even with the Gravity Assisted Drive, a minimum of a week per light year. It means that trips can take months with most of that time spent in LongSleep. Fortunately, that time counts towards time served. When not in LongSleep crews work to maintain their ship, because if anything went wrong, it could be weeks before anyone responded. Starships are not luxurious, but places to work and protect you from the vacuum of space, radiation, and random asteroids. Yet despite the safety standards, there are budget considerations, especially if your employer is a corporation, and whilst your ship might protect you, it will still have been built on the cheap. The same goes for outposts and mining facilities and the few settlements on other worlds—for no one has struck it lucky and found the equivalent of an Earth as she was planet. So living and working space is rough, hard, and sometimes lonely. And that is before you consider the dangers of corporate feuds, off-the-books scientific research, the psychological stresses of working cooped up with others for long periods, and then there is always the unknown…
This is the set-up for Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying, a roleplaying game inspired by the Blue Collar Science Fiction of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, such as Alien, Outland, Silent Running, and Blade Runner, plus computer games like Dead Space. Published by OspreyGames—the imprint of Osprey Publishing best known for its highly illustrated military history books—Those Dark Places is its third roleplaying game after Paleomythic and Romance of the Perilous Land. Although it very much wears its influences on the hard-wearing material of its sleeves, Those Dark Places is not necessarily a Science Fiction roleplaying game in which the crew will encounter strange aliens which morph into xenomorphs that want to hunt them and turn them into incubators. This is not to say that it could not be, but that is very down to what type of game that the General Monitor—as the Game Master is known in Those Dark Places—wants to run. Instead it is a game of environmental horror and dread, of loneliness and fear, of stress and strain, at the limits of mankind’s survival. Expect encounters with crazed killers driven to madness and murder by loneliness and never being able to walk under an open sky—or poisoned by their environment or the drugs they have been taking to numb the boredom; feuds over scientific discoveries and research which have escalated from industrial espionage to open conflict between corporate militaries; scientific discoveries and research gone to devastatingly deadly effect and which a corporation will do anything to cover up or prevent from being stolen; and more…
A Crew Member is defined by his name and description, CASE File, Crew Positions he is qualified for, and Pressure. His CASE File represents his actual attributes—Charisma-Agility-Strength-Education, which are rated between one and four. It should be noted that Strength works as the equivalent of a Crew Member’s Hit Points, as well as his physical presence. His Crew Position can be Helm Officer, Navigation Officer, Science Officer, Security Officer, Liaison Officer, Engineering Officer, or Medical Officer. To create a Crew Member, a player assigns values of one, two, three, and four to his Crew Member’s CASE File. Then he selects his Crew Member’s primary Crew Position, which is rated at +2, and his secondary Crew Position, which is rated at +1. The process is as simple as that!
Warrant Officer Grieg is an Engineering Officer aboard the CSV Lullaby, a commercial tug owned by Bellerophon Incorporated. He is six years into his contract and is a strong advocate of workers’ rights. He is always the Union representative on any vessel he serves aboard.
Oran Greig
Charisma 3 Agility 1 Strength 4 Education 2
Pressure: 6
Pressure Level: 0
Crew Position: Engineering (Primary)
Crew Position: Liaison (Secondary)
Mechanically, Those Dark Places is very simple and requires no more than a six-sided die or two per player. To have his Crew Member undertake a task, a player rolls a six-sided die and adds the values for the appropriate Attribute and Crew Position. The target difficulty is typically seven, but may be adjusted down to six if easier, or up to eight if more difficult. If the task warrants it, rolling the target number exactly counts as a partial success rather than a complete success. In that case, the player needs to roll over the target difficulty. Combat uses the same mechanics, with damage inflicted being deducted from an opponent’s Strength. A Crew Member is unconscious when his Strength is reduced to zero and dead when it drops to minus two. Sample damage is just one for a punch, three for a pistol, and four for a rifle.
However, Those Dark Places does get more complex when dealing with stress and difficult situations, or Pressure. A Crew Member has a Pressure Bonus, equal to his Strength and Education, and a Pressure Level, which runs from one to six. A Pressure Roll is made when a Crew Member is under duress or stress, and all a player has to do is roll a six-sided die and add his Crew Member’s Pressure Bonus to beat a difficulty number of ten. Succeed and the Crew Member withstands the stress of the situation, but fail and his Pressure Level rises by one level. However, when a Crew Member’s Pressure Level rises to two, and each time it rises another level due to a failed Pressure Roll, the Crew Member’s player rolls a six-sided die and the result is under the current value of his Pressure Level, the Crew Member suffers an Episode. This requires a roll on the Episode table, the results ranging from ‘In Shock’ and losing points from a Crew Member’s Attributes , up through Rigid, Catatonia, and ‘Insane Fear and Driven to Violent Flight’. Whenever a Crew Member’s player needs to make a roll on the Episode Table, the maximum result possible is limited by the Crew Member’s Pressure Level. So at Pressure Level 3, a Crew Member can only be In Shock and suffer points lost from either his Agility or Strength, but not anything worse.
One issue with Pressure Level and Episodes is that a Crew Member cannot immediately recover from either. It takes time in LongSleep or back on Earth to even begin to recover… Worse, once a Crew Member suffers an Episode, its effects linger, and he can suffer from it again and again until he manages to control his personal demons.
And that is the extent of the rules to Those Dark Places. For the General Monitor, there is a more detailed discussion of how they work, the various roles or Crew Positions aboard ship, the types of campaigns that can be run—typically based around the type of ship that the Crew Members are operating. So tugboats, passenger ships, science vessels, arbiter ships, tactical vessels, and more, each suggesting ideas about what such a crew would be doing and it might be tasked with doing. These are accompanied with descriptions of the types of reports that the Crew Members will be expected to make. These include Personnel Reports, Accident Reports, Industrial Espionage Reports, and more. Essentially combine a Personnel Report and a ship type and a General Monitor has a decent selection of campaign ideas to inspire her. Rounding out Those Dark Places is The Argent III Report, a complete scenario surrounding the sudden appearance of a research vessel thought lost for decades. It is playable in a session or two.
Physically, Those Dark Places is well presented, although untidy in one or two places. The artwork is good, definitely showcasing its inspirations.
Although clearly inspired by films like Alien, Those Dark Places is not a roleplaying game about facing strange, horrible creatures. This is reflected in the fact that there are no rules for creating such things in the book. Indeed, the rules for creatures focus on creating pets like cats and dogs for companionship in space rather than monsters. There are though, rules for running and playing Synthetic Automatons if the General Monitor includes them. Essentially, Those Dark Places is about facing horrors human and environmental rather than actual monsters. Nor is it a roleplaying game with a set background, although one is outlined should the General Monitor want one. At two pages, even this background is short enough to allow the General Monitor room aplenty to insert content of her own, that is if she does not want to create a background of her own.
However, all of this is not about roleplaying Blue Collar or Industrial Science Fiction and Horror in space—although Those Dark Places could be run like that. In actuality, what Those Dark Places is about is applying for a career working in deep space. The process of creating a Crew Member, of filling in a CASE File, is writing the application form. And then, the playing of Those Dark Places is not roleplaying missions out on the frontier, but simulations—run by the interviewer as part of the application process—run to test their suitability for working between Earth and the frontier of space. All of this is delivered in an game voice that is a mix of wearied tone, corporate cheeriness, and faux ‘I believe in you’ attitude of a Human Resources interviewer that manages to both capture the tiresome nature of applying for employment and make the reader/potential Crew Member want to punch the writer/speaker. It is a brilliant conceit which creeps up on the reader as he works his way through the book.
Unfortunately, Those Dark Places is being released when there are already two roleplaying games within its genre, the Alien Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing and Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games, both having been released relatively recently onto the market. However, Those Dark Places is very much its own thing, a combination of simple mechanics and human and environmental horror—plus its simulation/employment application conceit rather than necessarily being a game of facing horror and horrible monsters in deep space or being based on a licence.
Combining light mechanics and an easily familiar genre, Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying is a pleasingly accessible treatment of Blue-Collar Science Fiction of the seventies and eighties. It enables the General Monitor to run simulations in which the horror lies not only in isolation and what we might find on the fringes of space, but also in what humanity brings with it.
There is no denying the continued and growing popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, with it having appeared on the television series Stranger Things and it no longer being seen as a hobby solely the preserve of typically male, nerdy teenagers and young adults. Yet as acceptable a hobby as roleplaying and in particular, playing Dungeons & Dragons has become, getting into the hobby is still a daunting prospect. Imagine if you will, being faced with making your first character for your first game of Dungeons & Dragons? Then what monsters will face? What adventures will you have? For nearly all of us, answering these questions are not all that far from being a challenge, for all started somewhere and we all had to make that first step—making our first character, entering our first dungeon, and encountering our first monster. As well written as both Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and the Player’s Handbook are, both still present the prospective reader and player with a lot of choices, but without really answering these questions in an easy to read and reference fashion.Step forward the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ published by Ten Speed Press. This is a series of introductory guides to Dungeons & Dragons, designed as primers to various aspects of the world’s leading roleplaying game. Each in the series is profusely illustrated, no page consisting entirely of text. The artwork is all drawn from and matches the style of Dungeon & Dragons, Fifth Edition, so as much as it provides an introduction to the different aspects of the roleplaying game covered in each book in the series, it provides an introduction to the look of the roleplaying game, so providing continuity between the other books in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ and the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set and the core rulebooks. This use of art and the digest size of the book means that from the start, every entry in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ is an attractive little package.
The first in the series, Warriors & Weapons provided an introduction to the various Races of Dungeons & Dragons, the martial character Classes, and the equipment they use. Subsequent entries in the series have examined Monsters & Creatures and Dungeons & Tombs, culminating in the surprisingly late and seemingly out of sequence, Wizards & Spells. And there it would seem that the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ had covered just about everything that the reader and potential play of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition need to know before progressing onto the roleplaying game itself. So the publication of Beasts & Behemoths, the fifth entry in the series, comes as something of a surprise, the unexpected equivalent in the series of the Monster Manual II to the Monster Manual. Of course, another book about monsters makes sense, since not only are books about monsters fun, but there are an awful lot of monsters and creatures in Dungeons & Dragons, and the earlier Monsters & Creatures cannot have been expected to cover all of them!
Where Monsters & Creatures categorised its entries by terrain, so Caverns & Dark Places, Forests, Mountains & Other Terrain, Oceans, Lakes, & Waterways, and more, Beasts & Behemoths breaks them down by size—Tiny & Small, Medium, Large & Huge, and Gargantuan. Its forty or so entries include Cranium Rats, Demilich, and Pseudodragon under Tiny & Small; Drow, Gnoll, and Sahuagin are listed as Medium creatures; Corpse Flower, Minotaur, and Umber Hulk for Large & Huge; and Purple Worm, Roc, and the dread Tarrasque for Gargantuan. The mix includes the familiar, such as the Hobgoblin, Orc, and Minotaur alongside the little known, like the Yuan-Ti and the Oni, but all are classic Dungeons & Dragons monsters and creatures. In addition, Beasts & Behemoths includes two subcategories, Lycanthropes and Metallic Dragons—or Good-aligned Dragons. So the former category has descriptions of the Wereboar, Wererat, and Weretiger as well as the Werewolf, whilst the latter ranges from the Brass Dragon to the Gold Dragon. This compliments the writeups of the Dragons of various colours in Monsters & Creatures. Every entry is given a double page spread, the left hand page showing an illustration of the creature or monster, a listing of its special powers, a description of its size, and an indication of its Danger Level, from ‘0’ or harmless to ‘5’ for really nasty. On the right-hand page there is a description of the monster or creature and its lair, accompanied by a list of things to do or not do when dealing with it.
Thus for the Medusa, the given Danger Level is ‘1’ and her Special Powers are, of course, her Petrifying Gaze. Her size is listed as being typically Human-sized—except that is, for her hair, which might be a whole bigger (and writhing, of course). Her write-up includes a description of how she comes upon the transformation into a Medusa and the price paid, plus the types of lair she prefers. The entry advises that when encountering a Medusa, an adventurer should carry a mirror with which to catch her reflection, as well as a powerful healing potion which undo the effects of her Petrifying Gaze. It also advises that an adventurer not catch her gaze nor seek out immortality.
Like Monsters & Creatures before it, Beasts & Behemoths adds legendary entries and encounters to complement its ordinary encounters. The description of the Death Knight is accompanied by a legendary entry for Lord Soth, the fallen Knight of Solamnia from the world of Krynn who would later be plucked from Krynn by the mysterious mists of Ravenloft. It covers his history, his lair, and the fearsome skeleton army he has at his command. Again, this is a nice accompaniment to the legendary entry for Vampires, the feared Count Strahd von Zarovich, to be found in Monsters & Creatures. These legendary creatures are foes that the adventurers are unlikely to face for a very long time, but they are ones to be whispered about in hushed tones—even the ones who are not evil or chaotic. Each of encounters consists of a short piece of fiction which sets up a situation that ultimately ends the reader being asked how he might react or what he might do next. To accompany the description of Pseudodragon, the encounter describes how Florizan Blank, the bard known as the ‘Dandy Duellist’ who combines dance moves and swordsmanship, comes upon such a creature in woods whilst he is tracking down a Hobgoblin tribe which attacked a nearby village. Will he attempt to tame the creature and take it as a companion—and if so, how? Will continue on his way, hurrying after his quarry lest they launch a raid on another village? These encounters nicely illustrate the play of Dungeons & Dragons and the type of encounters and questions that players will be dealing with from session to session. In addition, the inclusion of Florizan Blank is a nice call back to the fourth book in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’, Wizards & Spells.
Just as in Monsters & Creatures, the last words in Beasts & Behemoths are about using beasts to create stories and build a hero, taking the reader on his first steps to composing his adventurer’s story. It opens up a little to ask the player to wonder about the other heroes his character will adventure alongside, what and where his adventures take place, and of course, why? It explains a bit more about the play of Dungeons & Dragons, so serving as a light primer before the player gets to the table.
There are just two issues with Beasts & Behemoths. First, for a book filled with great Dungeons & Dragons artwork, it does not list or credit one single artist. This is really disappointing, not so say inexcusable, and both the publisher and Wizards of the Coast should know better. Second, Beasts & Behemoths commits the same error as Monsters & Creatures in using anachronisms when it comes to describing the size of the monsters and creatures in the book. For example, the Cranium Rat is described as being the size of a sneaker or Hobgoblin as being the size of a professional (American) football player in all of his gear. Again, the inclusion of such modernisms breaks the verisimilitude of the book, making very much a reference work out of the game when it could have been a reference work both out of the game and in the game.
Physically, Beasts & Behemoths is an attractive little hardback. It is bright, it is breezy, and it shows a prospective player what his character might face, both in the art and the writing. Further, the art shows lots of adventuring scenes which can only spur the prospective player’s imagination.
Now obviously, Beasts & Behemoths is designed to showcase Dungeons & Dragons and introduce the prospective player to what his character might encounter—especially in Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. However, much of its content would work just as well as introduction to some of the monsters of Dungeons & Dragons-style retroclones, though in its look, it is brighter and breezier than the style and tone of the typical fantasy roleplaying game from the Old School Renaissance.
Monsters & Creatures introduced the prospective player to just a tiny, but often iconic, few of the monsters and creatures in Dungeons & Dragons. Beasts & Behemoths adds to that, but also stands alone in that a player could read it rather than Monsters & Creatures to get an idea of some of the foes his character might face or encounter in the game. Similarly, Beasts & Behemoths is more of a general reference work, something suitable to have at the table during play, since its contents can serve as the legends and the folklore that a player character in a fantasy world might have learned about said monsters and creatures as he was growing up. That said, doing so adds another book to the table, and that may add unnecessary clutter during play. When it comes to clutter, are two books devoted to monsters in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’ enough—or will there be a slew of them, cluttering up the series?
Beasts & Behemoths is another bright and engaging entry in the series, providing another light introduction to the monsters of Dungeons & Dragons, and the game itself. It again nicely works as a gift as much as it does a useful reference work, but as an entry in the ‘Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer’s Guides Series’, it feels very much like an extra in the series rather than part of the essential quartet of titles.
See dozens more artworks by Hans Arnold, previously shared here.
Something a little different today. I had always wanted to combine two of my regular features, "This Old Dragon" and "One Man's God" into a series of the gods and goddesses presented in the pages of Dragon Magazine. I can think of a few examples off the top of my head without cracking the musty pages. I had always wanted to start with the Suel Pantheon, but I wanted to wait till I was done with the Deities & Demigods. Well, last month we all learned about the death of Len Lakofka and I wanted to mark it in some way. I thought maybe this would be a good way of doing that.
Introduction
A little bit of background here on This Old Dragon. I had purchased a couple of large gaming collections over the last few years. My brother also gave me a box of Dragons in really bad shape. After combining, keeping some, selling off others, and tossing (yeah, had too) ones that were in terrible shape I was left with about 100 or so Dragons that were in pretty bad shape. Most were missing covers, many are missing pages and maybe one or two are fully intact. In This Old Dragon, I am grabbing an issue out at random and reviewing them. I can only review what I have, so if it is missing I won't talk about it. The only exception I make is the covers. If I feel too much is missing or something important is missing I'll check my Dragon-Magazine CD-ROM.
One Man's God is my feature on the various mythos, gods, and goddesses as presented in the AD&D 1st Edition Deities & Demigods. Here I look through the various gods and monsters and see which ones would be better classified as AD&D 1st Ed Demons as defined by the Monster Manual. When there is nothing I look to the original myths to see what we can find.
Today I am going to do both features for the Suel Pantheon.
This Old Dragon: The Suel and their Gods
This feature began in Dragon Magazine #86 from June 1984 to #92 in December 1984. Or in my prime AD&D time. The feature was authored by Len Lakofka and had Gary Gygax's official stamp of approval on them. Len had also created the L Series of modules and the Lendore Isles. So in my mind, that meant there was still active Suel worship in the Isles and that the wizard on the cover of L1 The Secret of Bone Hill was a worshiper of Wee Jas. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The Suel made their very first appearance in the pages of the first The World of Greyhawk folio as an ancient empire whose language was still used. The Gods would get names, but not information blocks in the boxed set World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting. Soon after we began to get the gods in Dragon.
Before I get into the Gods proper, there are a few other issues we should cover.
This issue gives us a very new looking Leomund's Tiny Hut from Len Lakofka. This is so new in fact that I think this might be the first-ever Tiny Hut article. There is an introduction by Gary himself. This installment covers giving more depth to the humans and languages of the Flanaess. Cool article and one that every Greyhawk DM should have handy. Actually, it is good for most DMs. The article is pretty long, longer than most Tiny Hut articles in my memory.
This is the article that lets us know that Suel are very near albino looking save with shades of violet for eyes. Given that these were the forerunners of the Lawful Evil Scarlet Brotherhood then it was kind of obvious that the Empire was some kind of a cross between the Melnibonéans and the Nazis.
In his From the Sorcerer's Scroll Gary gives us some more details on the Suel and how they moved across the continent to the Snow, Frost, and Ice Barbarian lands and how these peoples are the purest strains of the Suel bloodline. If the picture being painted is these are not particularly nice people then consider the painting done. Still, there are some interesting tidbits and it made me want to find out more and it made me want to find an offshoot of the Suel that weren't such xenophobic dicks.
I think Len made a lot of that possible in his series.
Dragon #86 was one of those issues that punched way above its weight class. I mean there was just so much in this that one would be excused if Len's article, Presenting the Suel Pantheon, was ignored. Here we are introduced to Lendor (the chief god) and Norebo (the god of thieves). The gods are presented in the same format as the D&DG gods; which sadly in the early 80s meant these were creatures that could be fought and could be killed. But I want to ignore that for bit and instead focus on what is really one of these first full (A)D&D pantheons. In the 3e era some of these gods would be folded back into the "Greyhawk" pantheon, but here they are on their own with their fellow Suel.
Lendor has a solid Odin feel to him and Norebo (maybe one of the most popular gods during my AD&D years) is like a slightly less evil Loki. This trend is going to continue.
Dragon Issue #87
This issue covers the gods Kord and Phaulkon. Kord is the son of the lesser gods Phaulkon and Syrul, though he himself is a greater god. He is also one of the most popular and worshiped Suel god. He is the god of battle, swordsmanship, and berserk rage. He has thousands of semi-mortal/semi-divine children, any of which who meet his challenges can claim demi-god status. If you are thinking Thor with a sword mixed with Conan then you are not too far off. Since this issue also featured the Ecology of the Dryad, I figured that Kord had a particular affection for them. In fact I am going to say that the Korreds, who would later appear in the Monster Manual II, began as the offspring of Kord and the multitude of dryads he..uh.seduced. Sure let's go with that word.
Phaulkon is the winged god of air, flying and archers. If Kord is the superior melee combatant, then Phaulkon is the superior missile combatant. He can speak with any bird or any creature that uses wings to fly, including demons and devils. He is Chaotic Good so I always felt there would a natural rivalry between Phaulkon and Pazuzu, both striving for control over the air and air creatures.
Dragon Issue #88Here we get Syrul, Fortubo, and Wee Jas the unrequited love of my life (circa age 14). Wee Jas, of course, grabbed my attention like nothing else in this issue. She was a gorgeous goddess of magic known as the Witch Queen? How in the hell was I supposed to ignore that? For years I thought this art was a Larry Elmore piece, but it is actually Jeff Butler. I think the wide eyes are what really sets this piece off. Bella Donna indeed.
Of all the Suel gods it is Wee Jas that has had her best life in the years following this publication. What do we learn about her? Well at this point she is still a greater goddess of magic and death. She knows every magic-user spell and all other spells to 5th level (why only 5th??). She can cast up to 9 spell levels worth of spells each round; so 1 9th level spell or 9 1st level or any combination. She has 90% magic resistance and a globe of invulnerability that floats around her. She is attractive (Charisma 20) and always appears so.
If she is anything she is very lawful. To the point where good and evil are mostly meaningless to her just as long as you are not chaotic. In fact, she pretty much hates anything chaotic except for the chaotic neutral god Norebo; who is her brother (or half-brother) and occasional lover. Gods. Go figure.
In the letters section in a couple Dragons later it is mentioned that Norebo's entry mentions Wee Jas, but Wee Jas' doesn't. The editors reply that it is because Wee Jas is loathed to admit it and Norebo could also be bragging.
Also, have a look at her name "Wee Jas" or "Wee" and "Ja" or "Oui Ja". She is the goddess of the Ouija board as well. Magic. Death and Spirits. Clever Gary.
Syrul is the evil goddess of lies and false promises. Fortubo is the dwarf-like god of mountains, stone, and metals. Neither are half as interesting as Wee Jas. Well, Fortubo was interesting on his own, but not compared to my 1984 girlfriend here.
To stretch out Norse analogies a bit Wee Jass is a bit of Hel and Freyja combined. But there is also a good amount of Hecate in her.
Since Len also created the Death Master NPC class I figured at least a few Death Masters were aligned with Wee Jas instead of Orcus. This was part of their strong rivalry for the dead.
This issue continues those wonderful Denis Beauvais "Chess" covers. So therefore the Suel Empire invented chess on Oerth.
In this issue, Len features Pyremius, Beltar, and Llerg. It is interesting to see which of these gods survived to today. These gods made it to the 3.x Living Greyhawk Gaz and Complete Divine. Pyremius is the God of Fire, Poison, and Murder. He looks like a conehead to be honest. The next goddess, Beltar, just has a Conehead sounding name. She is the Goddess of Deep Caves, Pits, and Malice. She appears as an old crone, a beholder or as a Type V, or Marilith, demon. I would say she has a few of both types of creatures under her command. Llerg is the God of Beasts and Strength and appears a bear-like man. He seems like a decent enough god. He prefers to live on his own in the woods and deals more with animals and other beasts. I was half-tempted back in the day to also make him the God of Bears, in the sub-culture sense. Now I am fully tempted.
This issue also gave us the first Creature Catalog from Dragon. Here are a number of creatures that could easily be re-classified as demons; at least in the OMG sense. These include the Fachan, the Ghuuna (already has a demonic origin), and the Utukku. Beltar in particular would have Utukku under her control. I went back to the original myths and did my own Utukku and Umu demons for Ghosts of Albion and a completely different version was created for Pathfinder.
Before we get to the Suel article proper, Out on a Limb covers the seemingly impossible relationship between chaotic to the core Norebo and hard-line lawful Wee Jas. Kim Mohan makes two suggestions. First, opposites attract and Norebo has a big mouth. Second, they goofed. I like the idea of them being together, to be honest. Gods need to be complicated. Though given that Norebo and Wee Jas are also half-siblings, I guess really complicated. Well, no one bats an eye when it happens in Egyptian and Greek pantheons.
You can also go with Mike's take on it over at Greyhawkery.
On to the article proper we have a collection of sea gods. Phyton, Xerbo, and Osprem. Phyton is the God of Beuty and Nature, he is our ersatz Baldur. Xerbo is our God of the Sea, Money, and Business, so a cross between Nord and Poseidon/Neptune. Osprem is the Goddess of Sea Voyages. Our two sea gods Xerbo and Osprem both have tridents. I guess there is a rule that sea gods must have one. They only have cool relations with each other. They try not to fight each other and when a threat challenges the seas they are allied. But otherwise, they do not get along. Osprem is in particular worship in and around the Lendore Isles.
This issue also featured the Incantatrix. Under normal situations, I would figure out a way to bring her into the fold with the Suel gods, but the write-up is not only so Realms specific, the Incantatrix has a history in the Realms. So she stays where she is.
Here again, we come to the end. Not just of 1984, but of this series.
This issue also covers some new rules and ideas for clerics. Since I played a lot of clerics back then I rather enjoyed this issue. Gary offers up some advice ("Clerics Play by Different Rules") and a few others. This issue also gave us installment III of Pages from the Mages, but that was covered in a previous retrospective.
Out Suel gods are Lydia, Bralm, and Jascar. Lydia is the goddess of light and song. Bralm the Goddess of Insects and Industriousness, and Jascar the God of Hills and Mountains. No mention of his relationship to the other mountain god, Fortubo. These gods and their write-ups were a nice working model of what Gygax was saying above about how clerics need to be different.
That is all the Suel gods from the World of Greyhawk. These gods all survived to the 3rd Edition Living Greyhawk Gazetteer with some edits. I guess the Suel Empire is not so forgotten after all!
One Man's God: The Demons
The nature of these articles did not include demons or even demonic creatures. They were very focused on the Gods themselves. For demons that fit into this pantheon, I would suggest we go back to the source, the Monster Manual. Here are the demons of this pantheon.
Of the ones mentioned above, I think Orcus, Pazuzu, and Yeenoughu are the obvious choices.
The Demihuman Mythos from the D&DG is another good source. The Oerth gods though do have their own "devil" in the form of Tharizdûn. He is a god, or was, or still is, but a fallen one.
The Suel were a people of such xenophobia that any non-lawful god, godling, or monster would have been considered a demon. The Suel in fact would have more in common with devils and the 4e lost empire of Bael Turath. In fact there could even be a link between Bael Turath and the Suel Empire.
In my own games, the Suel Empire were still the xenophobic dicks they always are, but they also had a special hatred for demons. The great artifact sword "Demonbane" was of Suel manufacture.
There is always more to hear about the World of Greyhawk and the Suel. Sadly one of the voices is now no more. Gonna miss you Len!
Quick one today. My NIGHT SHIFT Co-designer and the main author, Jason Vey, has been posting about some of the game design choices we made in NIGHT SHIFT and why we wanted to stick with an old-school feel instead of creating a new system.
You can read his thought over on his blog for Elf Lair Games.
The points Jason makes in his posts are salient here. Going back to a well-known system at least for me has solved a number of problems.
New GMs Screen & Amazon
Jason just released the new GM screen on DriveThruRPG. Grab these for your Portrait style screens.
Also, you can now get hardcover versions of NIGHT SHIFT from Amazon.
You can still get your hardcover and the special edition, numbered, hardcover from the Elf Lair Games store.
Can't wait to share more with you!
NIGHT SHIFT Links
The campaign map has been approved for printing.
Work has me really busy right now, so I have been slow on getting new material out. Either in book form or for this blog (except for Halloween). But I wanted to give an update on what I am working on now.
I recently went through all my research notes, books, and files. This has been a good thing and something I like to do every so often to keep me grounded in what sort of game I want. It is far, far too easy in game design to drift away from your core principles into something else. One example of this power-creep in games, though there are other reasons for power-creep too. The other is scope-creep and that is when a project gets too unwieldy and becomes much larger than intended.
Both types have hit my latest two works in progress, so I have been taking a step back to see what I really have.
Basic Bestiary
This is the "Big" project that has my focus now. The project began with collecting all the monsters from all my witch books, plus all the monsters for Monstrous Mondays, and additional ones I have but have not published. Once I pull them all together I had over 220 pages with 300 or so monsters with no art (yet). For me that felt like a "good size" but I got to thinking. Even if I edit them all and standardize them all, which is no small amount of work, these are all essentially "re-runs" material people have already seen and in some cases paid for. That didn't feel right to me. So I started adding more (power and scope creep!) and that is where the issues began.
For starters, I publish most for Basic-era (B/X, BECMI, OSE, LL) and Swords & Wizardry games. Add in all the other games I post about here I have monsters in six to seven different but still largely compatible systems. I needed to standardize my monster stat block. You have seen it's evolution here on my blog. The current and most stable version can be seen in yesterday's Fenodyree. Essentially a Labyrinth Lord stat block with some other information thrown in that I like to use in my games. If you go back and look at something like the Wendigo then you can see that there are three different, similar but not the same, stat blocks. So there is that process now going on. Some stat blocks like S&W and OSE are great, but far too minimal for me.
Also since the hardcover of The Craft of the Wise went over so well I decided that the Basic Bestiary needed softcover (Basic) and hardcover (Advanced) options. Here are the covers as they sit now. These very likely will change again.
Personally, I am really excited about all of these.
Working through some notes for my two current projects; The High Witchcraft Tradition and the Basic Bestiary. One of the things is to move around some content. Items, mostly monsters, that I had considered for the High Witchcraft book are now moving over to the Basic Bestiary. Some notes I had written for witches, in general, are also moving over the Basic Bestiary. This one of those.
There are a lot of Celtic creatures in mythology and many have similar-sounding names and others have different names in different locales. The Fenodyree from the Ilse of Man might be the same creature as the Brownie or the Woodwose. Or it might not.
FenodyreeThe Fenodyree are small fey that at first appear to be some sort of fur brown creature. They are very hairy small man-like creatures that appear like a brownie, woodwose, or even a small satyr. Their long brown hair covers their entire body. If they are wearing clothes, no one has been able to tell.
Like many solitary faeries, the fenodyree are very shy around humans, or anyone larger than a halfling. They are on decent terms with gnomes but do not make a habit of socializing with them.
The fenodyree lives to mow. They love nothing more than to be able to use their miniature harvest scythe and cut grass, wheat, barley, or any grain ready to harvest. Often they will harvest all the grain of a family in need, especially widows with young children. Like many fey, an offering should be left out for them. Fenodyree are fond of whiskey and rye. Also like most fey, they will disappear if spotted. If by turning invisible or by teleporting away. They can use either power at will or once per day respectively.
They prefer never to attack but will do so to protect their lives. They will teleport away at the first sign of trouble.
Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford’s mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha, and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.
—oOo—
What is it?
Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD is the fourth roleplaying game to explore the world of Judge Dredd and Mega-City One as depicted in 2000AD. Not only that, it lays the groundwork and the core rules for any number of comic strips to appear in the pages of the long running British weekly comic, including ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog—and more. The focus of Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD though, is firmly on the post-apocalyptic, dystopic satire of the police state—or ‘Judge state’—that is the setting of Judge Dredd. Published by EN Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD shares some comparisons to earlier iterations of roleplaying games based on the Judge Dredd licence. Like Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game from Games Workshop, it uses its own mechanics, in this case being powered by the W.O.I.N.—or ‘What’s OLD is NEW’—dice pool mechanics. Like The Judge Dredd Role-Playing Game, the d20 System version from Mongoose Publishing, that it allows players to create ordinary citizens and perps, as well as Judges, and like Judge Dredd, the Traveller version also from Mongoose Publishing, it allows the creation of Psi-Judges, Tek-Judges, and Med-Judges as well as Street Judges from the start. Another difference between Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD the previous iterations is that it is set in 2099, so a few years earlier in the timeline of Mega-City One.
A Player Character in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD is defined by a fair number of factors. At the narrative level, this factor is a descriptor, ‘A[n] [Age] [Trait] [Species] [Career] who [Hook]’ which sums up the character, for example, ‘An elderly egotistical Orangutan Fence who enjoys a real cigar’. On a mechanical level, a character has eight attributes—Strength, Agility, Endurance, Willpower, Intuition, Logic, Charisma, and Luck, as well as two secondary attributes, Reputation and Psionics. He will have any number of skills, ranging from Accounting, Light Armour, and Insight to clairsentience, boinging, and flirtation. Now all of these have a rating, typically four for the average Human and each has an associated dice pool of six-sided dice, typically two six-sided dice for the rating for four, which a player or the Referee rolls for character or NPC to undertake an action. A character will also have various Exploits, essentially talents and abilities gained from a character’s species and various careers, such as Pacification from the Applied Violence course a Cadet Judge can take at the Academy of Law which grants bonus baton damage or Art Savant from the Scrawler (graffiti artist) career which improves his Reputation with fellow Scrawlers. Lastly, a character has a Grade, which is a measure of the number of Careers a character can have. Typically, this is set at five for beginning characters, and besides limiting the number of careers a character have, it also limits the size of the dice pool a player can roll for his character.
To create a character, a player selects a species and its exploits, then three species skills. He then chooses five careers. From each he chooses two of the listed skills, either the Aim or Feint Exploit, and one more universal Exploit. Adjustments are made to Attribute and Skill rating as the player makes his choices. Each Career also adds one or more years to a character’s age. The process takes a little time and is slightly fiddley, but a player is given a lot of options to create an interesting character and a Referee to create interesting NPCs.
Our sample Player Character is Ookie Whithers, a Chimpanzee who grew up and lives in Apetown. Since he was a Juve he has been an associate of the Chimpolini crime family, but never rose high in its ranks because of his love of gambling. He has a minor record as a Juve and in more recent years has become a nark for the Department of Justice. He always has a book running on all manner of events and is never seen in the same waistcoat twice.
Ookie Whithers
A Suave Chimp Fence who can never turn down a bet
Age: 23
Grade: Five
Careers: Juve Gang, Gamer, Pongo, Fence, Nark
Strength 5 (2d6) Agility 5 (2d6) Endurance 3 (2d6) Willpower 2 (1d6) Intuition 8 (3d6) Logic 5 (2d6) Charisma 9 (3d6) Luck 7 (3d6)
Reputation 3 (2d6) Psionics 0 (0d6)
Health 11 Speed 19 Jump 10’/5’ Carry 80 lbs. Initiative 3d6
Melee Defence 11 Ranged 7 Mental Defence 11 Vital Defence 7
Skills
Accounting 1 (1d6), Appraisal 1 (1d6), Bluffing 2 (1d6), Brawling 1 (1d6), Carousing 1 (1d6), Forgery 2 (1d6), Gambling 3 (2d6), Insight 1 (1d6), Movies 1 (1d6)
Exploits
Agile, Beguiling, Feint, Great Leap, Lucky Escape, Natural Climber, Profit, Stone Cold Stare, Thrower, Weak-willed, What’s the Plan?, Where the Action is, Zero-g
Where creating a citizen or perp type character is supported by a wide range of options—though there is no equivalent of the ex-prisoner who has done time, the options for creating a Judge are more proscribed. A Judge has to be Human or a Clone, must take Cadet followed by two advanced courses, such as Basic Psionics or Citizen Manipulation, and then Rookie. The last Career is a Judge Career such as Med Judge, Psi-Judge, Street Judge, or Tek-Judge. More options are available in terms of Speciality Judge Career, which include Block Judge, Crime Scene Processor, Interrogator, Wally Squad, and more. These become available if the Referee is planning a game with more experienced Player Characters, and equally, a Referee could reduce the number of Careers to just four if she wants to start a campaign with Rookie Judges.
Our sample Judge is a clone taken from the same biological material as Judge Dredd. He wants to emulate his genetic stock and be a Judge worthy of his forebears. On the streets he relies upon his presence and his intimidating manner, and when that does not work, is a dab hand at pacification.
Judge Leonov
An Alert Street Judge who wants to be worthy of his clone source
Age: 24
Grade: Five
Careers: Cadet, Citizen Manipulation, Applied Violence, Rookie, Street Judge
Strength 7 (3d6) Agility 5 (2d6) Endurance 7 (3d6) Willpower 6 (3d6) Intuition 8 (3d6) Logic 6 (3d6) Charisma 5 (2d6) Luck 3 (2d6)
Reputation 2 (1d6) Psionics 0 (0d6)
Health 34 Speed 19 Jump 10’/7’ Carry 140 lbs. Initiative 10d6
Melee Defence 18 Ranged 7 Mental Defence 11 Vital Defence 11
Skills
Bravery 1 (1d6), Boxing 1 (1d6), Clubs 2 (1d6), Hardy 1 (1d6), Insight 1 (1d6), Interrogation 1 (1d6), Intimidate 3 (2d6), Law 3 (2d6), Light Armour 1 (1d6), Perception 1 (1d6), Pistols 1 (1d6), Riding 1 (1d6), Running 1 (1d6), Tactics 2 (1d6)
Exploits
Ingrained Skill Package, Fast Healing, Academy of Law Curriculum, Voice of the Law, Pacification, Obey the Law, Freeze!, Feint, Knockdown
Mechanically, Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD uses W.O.I.N., or ‘What’s OLD is New’. This is a dice pool system which uses six-sided dice, the size of the dice pool being determined by a character’s attribute, skill, and the quality of equipment used. This is then rolled and the results totalled to beat a Difficulty Score, which can range from Easy or seven all the way up to Mythic or forty-five. A typical Difficulty Score will be Routine or ten, Difficult or sixteen, and Demanding or twenty-one. If three or more of the dice rolled are sixes, then a critical result has been achieved. The number of dice rolled can be adjusted by Complications , such as shooting at someone behind cover, scaling the side of a building in a snowstorm, or simply not having the right equipment.
However, whatever the size of the dice pool a player or Game Master has built, the maximum number of dice rolled is determined by a Player Character or NPC’s Grade. For most Player Characters, this will be five. Further, the player or Referee can spend dice for various effects. In combat, this will typically be to increase damage, at a cost of two dice from the pool to add an extra die to the damage roll, but many Exploits also require dice to be spent. For example, Blind Shot enables a character in cover to shoot at an opponent without looking at them at a cost of two dice.
The mechanics also cover common situations like chases, engineering problems, hacking and computing, tailing, and more. Countdown situations, such as a Judge being critically injured and in danger of dying or picking a lock before a guard patrol comes in sight, are handled by dice pools. The dice pool is rolled from turn to turn, each roll of a six reducing the size of the pool, until the pool is depleted and the effect of the countdown counting down is triggered.
Each Player Character also has a Luck pool of dice equal to the number of dice derived from his Luck attribute. These dice are spent on a one for one basis to add to an attribute check or to reduce the size of an opponent’s attribute check, reduce damage dice suffered or increase damage dice inflicted, and to trigger Exploits. The expenditure of one Luck will also grant a character an extra action, buy off a Condition (typically suffered in combat, but it may also come from an environment), and so on. Luck dice do need to be of a different colour as unlike ordinary dice, they explode on a result of six or more. Luck dice can typically be replenished once per day.
Combat in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD is designed to be a tactical skirmish system, ideally using miniatures and a combat map, although it need not be run that way. The rules cover position, overwatch, flanking and crossfire, dual-wielding, and more. As well as accounting for the environment and its effects, such as a snowy street or underwater, the rules also add Stunt Areas, like a hanging cable, a patch of ice, or a banister, which a character can take advantage of. Using a Stunt Area not only grants a bonus to a character, often a bonus to a damage roll, but also nicely captures the comic book feel action of Judge Dredd.
Psionics are covered through the Psionic attribute and its dice pool, plus skills such as Biopsionics, Clairvoyance, Telepathy, and Teleportation and their associated abilities. So Clairsentience covers Hypcognition, Necrophony, Combat Precognition, and Retrocognition, whilst Telepathy covers Empathy, Mind Control, Mindprobe, Mindread, Mindwipe, and a whole lot more. These are powered by Psionic Power Points—derived from the Willpower and Psionic dice pools, and are learned through taking a career like a Psi-Judge or a Psyker. The rules themselves are workable, but being covered in just three pages feel brief as if waiting for the full supplement on the subject.
Overall, the mechanics are workable and at their core, are easy enough to understand. Obviously, situations like combat or handling chases or psionic encounters will complicate things, but not overly so. In play, a player will need to need to pay attention to what his character’s Exploits can do to get the most out of W.O.I.N., whilst in general, W.O.I.N. does feel as if it should be more cinematic than it necessarily is, but elements of the mechanics, such as various Exploits and Stunt Zones do push Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD towards a comic book style of play. Rules are provided should the Game Master want a cinematic style of game.
The list of equipment for Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD covers everything that a Judge would use, from the Birdie lie detector to Riot Foam Cutters, as well as civilian and criminal gear, including Bat Glider Suit and Spray Paint Aerosol. It would have perhaps been useful if the equipment issued or available to Judges had been more clearly marked.
The setting of Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD—Mega-City One and beyond, is given a good overview before focusing on particular locations in the metropolis, each of which is pleasingly accompanied by suggestions as to how to use that location. However, for a roleplaying game which focuses on law enforcement, the section on crime and punishment and the list of crimes and their typical sentences is at best brusque. It does not help that this section is hidden in the book or that the list is not repeated in the appendix of tables at the back of the book.
For the Game Master, there is solid advice on running scenarios and campaigns set in Mega-City One, as well as capturing the atmosphere of the setting, types of campaign and scenario, and handling opponents and rewards. Suggested campaign types include Citizen- and Perp-based campaigns as well as Judge-based campaigns. Rules are provided for the Game Master to create her own foes, monsters, and other NPCs, as well as listing typical foes, ranging from Blitz Agents, Citizens, and members of Citi-Def to Tek-Judges, Vagrants, and Workers. Sadly, the selection of foes does not include any of the classic criminals and enemies faced by Judge Dredd himself, which is undeniably disappointing.
Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD includes a starting scenario or ‘Crime Blotter’. This is ‘State of the Empire’ and revisits the very first Judge Dredd comic strip back in Prog #2 of 200AD when Judge Dredd went into the ruins of the Empire State Building to arrest ‘Whitey’, the vicious leader of a gang of perps who killed Judge Alvin. It can be run with a team of Judges going into apprehend the perp, but it could also be run with a group of perps doing a retrieval job for a local hoodlum or ordinary citizens who go in search of a missing child at the wrong time. It is primarily an exploration and combat scenario designed to showcase the rules more than the satire and humour of the setting. However, that aside, it works well enough.
Fortunately, Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD also provides a number of further Crime Blotters for the Game Master to develop. Whether it is investigating a break in at a Munce foodstuffs laboratory or a potential block-war, all five are nicely detailed and include guidelines on how to run them for Judges, perps, or citizens. The quintet also delve further into the setting of Mega-City One and provide some great action for all character types.
Rounding out Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD is an appendix of various tables for the game. The appendix also includes a set of pregenerated Judges ready to play ‘State of the Empire’ and the other Crime Blotters. The Lawmaster and the Lawgiver, the famous motorbike driven by all Judges and feared handgun wielded by all Judges retrospectively, are also given their character sheets of their own here. Fans of Judge Dredd as a roleplaying game will be pleased to note that the Lawmaster is designed to complement a Judge rather than outperform him.
Physically, Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD is breezily and brightly presented. It needs an edit in places, but one clever feature is that each chapter is colour-coded for easy reference and access. Another enjoyable feature of the design is that comic strips are used to illustrate aspects of the rules, including a sample of play and character creation. The use and choice of artwork taken from the Judge Dredd comic is also well done, capturing a lot of its action and tone. However, the layout of Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD is just a little too busy and fussy in places and it is difficult to find things despite the inclusion of an index.
There are a trio of omissions from Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD. One is the aforementioned menagerie of criminals, enemies, and foes faced by Judge Dredd. Another is rules for vehicle combat, which really would have complemented the guidelines for handling chases, their lack meaning that the Game Master will have to improvise in order to bring the Lawmaster into play, something that happens often in the comic strip. Lastly, there are no rules for handling arrests, which feels really, really weird given how intrinsic that is to the setting of Mega-City One and what a Judge will be doing from one shift to the next. Now, there are skills which can be used, such as Intimidate and Exploits, to handle arrests, but really, not having a discussion of it is a major omission.
Ultimately, the omissions in Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD mean that it is not the best treatment of Judge Dredd in a roleplaying game. Not all of those omissions are insurmountable, and it is likely that there will be supplements which will address them in the future, but their absence just does not feel right. However, there is a great deal to like about Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD. It presents three different campaign options—Citizen, Perp, or Judge, and supports all three with the means to create a wide range of character types and multiple scenarios which can be used in all three campaign types. The W.O.I.N. mechanics are serviceable, and the rulebook brightly and breezily captures the tone and energy of the comic strip. Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD might need more fleshing out than a core rulebook really should, but as an introduction to the setting and the first few games in the setting, it more than adequately lays the groundwork and sets everything up for roleplaying in Mega-City One of the Judge Dredd comic strip and the various roleplaying treatments of 2000AD comic strips to come.
Untitled Lovecraft Artwork 
Dine and Dance 
Saboth 
Explorer 
Untitled Lovecraft Artwork 
Abdul Alhazred writing the Necronomicon 
The Ghoul 
The Lurking Fear 
The Feast 
The Whisperer in the Darkness 
Yagath 
Kadath 
Dream-Thing 
IÄA. Shub-Niggurath Y'A 