Character Creation: Amazing Tales

Not "Amazing Stories," that's something different. 

The Game: Amazing Tales
The Publisher: Amazing Tales, I guess? Shelter in Play?
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Tenth game of January, woo! Made it! Just needed something quick n' easy to round it out, and this game is only 26 pages. 

The basic premise here is that it's an adventure game you could play with a four-year-old. System-wise, you're using different dice to represent things your character is good at, and any roll above 2 is a success, so at worst you have 50/50 odds. This of course requires that the child in question knows how to count pips or recognize numbers, but that's by no means beyond most 4-year-olds (I have to constantly remind myself that my view of what preschoolers can do is skewed by my job; most of the time if I'm seeing a kiddo it's because they're not typically developing). I think that if you were going to try an RPG with a four-year-old, this game might work, though I think you're probably better off just giving them some blocks or toys and letting them free play. But it very much depends on the kiddo in question.

ANYWAY before I fall down the rabbit hole of language development, let's make a character. This oughta be pretty quick. Actually, first I need a setting, but there are a whole bunch so I'll pick one randomly. "Sailing the Upside Down Sea," perfect. We're all nautical n' shit. 

OK, so my sailor is going to be called Gristleguts Greencoat, so named because he wears a green waistcoat that was once fancy but has been bleached by sea air to a minty sort of color. Gristleguts is snarly and loud and probably has a bosun sort of role on the ship, but in truth he is very fond of his sailors and would never let anything harm them. 

Four things ol' Gristleguts is good at: shouting, protecting his crew, knowing when people lie, and running the ship. I'll assign the d12 to protecting, the d10 to shouting, the d8 to running the ship, and the d6 to knowing when people lie. 

And that's it, folks. Yar!

Character Creation: Valor

Valor. Honor. Buttor. (There's your Homestar Runner reference for the month.)

The Game: Valor
The Publisher: Valorous Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I could actually make another H*R reference, because Strong Bad's line "IT'S CALLED JAPANIMATION" comes to mind, but that seems a little on the nose. Anyway, Valor isn't explicitly derived from a particular anime (not that I'd know, really, but one isn't mentioned), but the artwork is very much in that style. 

The game is (sigh) without an official setting. It reminds me a lot of Tri-Stat (specifically Big Eyes, Small Mouth) mixed with the more tactical elements of Savage Worlds. Tonally it reads a bit like Feng Shui. I don't really see much to endear me to the game, but I didn't want to bang my head on things when I was reading, either, so I guess that's OK. Let's make a character.

I'm going to use the sample campaign. Also, I really wish this damn PDF was bookmarked.

All right, so this isn't a million miles from Changeling: The Dreaming or Æternal Legends or other urban fantasy games where the secret world is hidden under illusion (I could keep naming examples). There are a few factions that I could have a character be part of, but I'm thinking Freelancer might be fun - someone who's just come into their abilities (since all PCs are level 1 anyway) and is a gun for hire. This implies I have something overtly supernatural I can do, but we'll get there. 

Ugh, this is one of those annoying games where chargen isn't summarized, you just have to bumblefuck your way through the book. OK, fine. First...well, first technically is concept, but I don't have a firm enough grasp of the game and how the mechanics fit together to do that, so I'm gonna start with Attributes and let the concept take shape as we go.

Five Base Attributes (Strength, Agility, Spirit, Mind, Guts), which then form the five Active Attributes (Muscle, Dexterity, Aura, Intuition, Resolve, respectively), which are the ones that actually get added to rolls. I have 25 points to buy Base Attributes, minimum 1, maximum 8. I could divide up evenly, of course, but where's the fun in that.

What the hell, I have some time today. Let's put 7 points into Spirit so I can magicky stuff. I'll put 3 into Strength and Agility, which gives me 12 more. I'll split them evenly into Mind and Guts. 

Active Attributes are [Base Attribute + Level]/2, rounded up, so I have Muscle 2, Dexterity 2, Aura 4, Intuition 4, Resolve 4. Moving on!

One thing I do like is that the book breaks down each Attribute, tells you what they do in play, and what it implies if you put a given Attribute higher than others. I think a lot of games might benefit from not just explaining what such traits mean but what they mean with regards to a character. Kind of more numbers-based version of the Apocalypse World "play this playbook if you want to X" thing. 

Anyway, now some derived stuff (which I'm not writing down because I just bet these can change). Health is 50 + (5xStrength) + (10xGuts) + (10xLevel), or 135. Health Increment is Health/5, or 27. Critical Health is twice the Increment, or 54. 

Stamina is 8 + (Spiritx2) + (Mindx2) + (Levelx4), or 38. Stamina Increment is Stamina/5, or 8 (round up).

Strength Attack is (Strength + Level) x 2, so 8. Agility Attack is figured the same way; also 8. Actually all of the Attacks are (there just isn't one for Guts), so Spirit Attack is 16 and Mind Attack is 14. 

Damage Increment is Level + 5, but the book notes that Skills can increase it, so 6 for now. Defense is double Level plus Strength and Guts, or 11 for me. Resistance is double Level plus Mind and Spirit (15). Move is 3. Valor begins at 0. 

See, and now there's discussion of XP and combat, but one would be forgiven for thinking chargen is over! But no! There's other shit to do! This is why a chargen sidebar/chart/checklist/banana would be useful. Closest I see is a level chart, which actually does help somewhat because looking at the Level 1 bar I get a sense of what else I have to do:

No idea what a lot of that means, but we'll figure it out. It's an adventure!

Skills, then. I get 20 points. Some Skills are fixed (which I think means ya either got 'em or ya don't), some have levels. The chapter starts with a long chart of all the Skills, and then an explanation of what we're doing, which is not the way I'd prefer to have this set up, but whatevs. 

OMG. OK, so Skills have a level ceiling, but it's different and differently figured for each type (there are three types). Kill me. Fortunately I don't have a lot of points and I can only take Season 1 Skills anyway, so this shouldn't take too long. Guess I should think about my character. 

Let's say that my character was walking home from his crappy job in a Dollar Store (look, it's a job) and got lost in the fog. He followed a light (NEVER FOLLOW THE LIGHT) and fell down a well into a void. But for whatever reason, the void didn't keep him. It spat him back out and he carries some of the void with him. He's learning to do...things with it. 

Good start. So I'll spend 4 SP and take Darksight, and then I'll spend 6 more and take Energy Attack (letting me throw bolts of void). That increases my Mind and Spirit Attacks by 6, making them 20 and 22, respectively. That's half my points, though. I'll take Resistant (the void just swallows energy attacks thrown at me), raising my Resistance to 19. 

Ooh, I like Dark Healing. Means I have to take the Malevolent Entity Flaw, but that sounds about right. That costs 5SP, so I only have one left. I guess I need to look at Flaws, though. Easy enough, the Malevolent Entity Flaw gives me 5SP back. I have 6, then. I'll pay those and buy Blazing Might (I can play 3 Valor and raise Spirit and Mind Attack by 8). 

Techniques are combat abilities, and they continue to remind me of Tri-Stat inasmuch they're comprised of a core and modifiers (and potentially limits). I get 12 points to build them, and I have a max level of 4 in any given Technique. Also since I have Malevolent Entity, I can take the Dark Power Limit. I'm meant to make these up and then build them, so OK, sure.

I'd like my guy to have a power that saps the energy from anyone in the immediate area, a kind of "drain the light" sort of technique. And lookit this, one of the Cores is Weaken. It lets me apply Flaws to a target. 

Next we determine the Attribute that controls the Technique; I want Spirit, obviously. 

Modifiers. There's a few that I like, but I'm limited it what I can do because I need to save some points for the Core Power Level and I can't go over 4 (modifiers add to the level of the Technique). I Blast Radius, though, so I'll suck it up and buy that for two points. 

Speaking of which: Core Power. I take the total level (4, because I want the max for this), subtract the Modifiers (2), I'm left with 2 points. For a Weaken Core, I pick two levels of Flaws and that's what the Technique applies. I'll pick Lack of Control; anyone affected has their Max Stamina reduced by 8. 

Limits! Limits lower the Stamina cost to use a Technique, but not the level, sadly. I know I want Dark Power, and that lowers the cost to 0 right there. Actually maybe I want to avoid Dark Power, here? It lowers the Stamina Cost by 10, for crying out loud. I'll use that for another, more devastating power. For Drain the Light, I'll take Immobile - I can't move while using it. 

That's 4 of my 12 points. I'll get some more, sure. How about a Summoning Core, to call up some magical shadow demon? It's simple enough; we'd build the demon as a character with a bunch of restrictions, which I'm not going to do because it isn't necessary here (but I'd probably prioritize speed and agility). Core Level can't be higher than 1, here, so I basically need to take 3 levels in modifiers (assuming I want to make this a level 4 Technique, which I do). Oh, wait, no, there aren't any Modifiers I can put on a Summoning Core. Fine, it's level 1, so I'll put the Dark Power Limit on this one, so it costs 0 Stamina to use. 7 more Technique Points. 

Well, how about your basic barrier of frigid void-shadows? Barrier Core, it'll use Aura, and I'll take Violent Barrier (the barrier does damage if someone crosses it). That only raises the level by 1, so I'll keep this to level 3 total. I'll take the Reload Limit to reduce Stamina cost a bit, too.

Four points left, so let's sink them all into one Damage Core power. I don't want Blast Radius, but I want some way to affect multiple targets, maybe? Let's see. Nah, I'll take Darkness Zone; anything I target becomes dark terrain for the rest of the scene. I'll put Dark Power on this one, too, so Stamina Cost 0. It does 15 + 5 per Core Power (so 10) + Spirit Attack damage, or 47 total. Ouch. 

And I think that about does it? Need a name and everything, of course.

Rex Perkins, as mentioned, followed a light and fell into a Void, and came back out with the Void in his head. The Void hasn't been especially forthcoming with what it wants, and Rex hasn't noticed anything going really pear-shaped on the occasions it does take the wheel. But then again, he doesn't like the way that the summoned shadow-creatures genuflect and grin at him...

Rex does not match his powers. He's sunny, cheerful, and generally nice - you know, the kind of person who would follow a mysterious light because it looks cool. That might be why the Void tends to numb him when it takes over. No need to upset him. 

Rex has dirty-blonde hair that goes a little stringy in the rain. His eyes used to be light blue, but they've darkened considerably since the Void came calling and they go completely black when he uses his powers. Rex quit his job at Dollar Store (at least, they tell him he did...oh, shit, was that the Void?) and he's been drumming up business as a shadow-flinger-for-hire, but he hasn't quite put together that doing that is going to involve violence, which is going to involve gambling on the Void not taking over. 

That's it! I like this character, actually.  

Character Creation: Ghost Club

I said I was gonna do a game with a setting next, and this one does indeed have a setting.

The Game: Ghost Club
The Publisher: Andrew Dowell (lot of games in the last couple of years that aren't published by companies per se, and also does no one have a web site anymore?)
Degree of Familiarity: None, but the game is only 40 pages
Books Required: Just the one

Kind of a mixture of spoopy (not spooky) horror, kids-on-bikes adventures, and Scooby-Doo-ish investigation. I'm always happy to play a supernatural investigation game, and I enjoy game that have kids as characters, so let's give this a whirl.

The game seems like it would play as much like a board game as anything - there's a ghost, the kids investigate the haunted house, but if I'm reading this right a lot of the ghost's actions are random. And I can see this being fun, mixing some board game elements with RPGs. Also chargen is mostly random, and I enjoy that. 

So the first thing we do is choose a name. There's a handy table to roll on, so let's try that. "Terry Knight." I can dig it. Sounds very protagonisty. 

Next is archetype. I can make my own, but I'll just roll a d5 since I don't have any concept going on yet. "The Scout." Sounds good. 

Cool. What next? Age! Rolling for it, I get...14. I get a +1 to Knowledge, boosting it to 3. 

Nickname! Kids here use nicknames while investigating, because it's safer than using one's real name. I can get behind that. Terry's nickname is (rolls)...Moon! I suspect here was an incident at scout camp involving a diving board and a loose swimsuit. Sometimes names just stick. 

Favorite color! "Midnight purple." Just "purple" is probably fine, guys.

Mask! For reasons related to the whole "nickname" thing, we wear masks while trespassing investigating. What kind of mask? Wolf! That's pretty cool. 

Bike! Roll...1. My bike is rusted out and Terry's repaired it a bunch of times. So why does Terry have such a shit bike? I think he had a nicer one, but it got stolen because Terry forgot to lock it up and his parents have this lame "learn a lesson" thing going on. He found this bike at a garage sale and paid $8 for it, and has been holding it together with chewing gum and love every since. 

Favorite food...hamburgers. Man after my own heart.

Phobia...trypophobia! Sure, why not. Honeycombs and the like creep Terry right the hell out.

Home...oh, this might require I tweak my bike story a little. 

Actually, no, that works perfectly. 

Character misquote! This is a list of movie quotes that are almost accurate. What's my favorite? "It's definitely, possibly a trap, maybe!" I like that, sounds pretty Terry.

And that's it! I think Terry joined scouts because it gave him something to do. His parents aren't fans of video games and the like, and they want him to have friends, but his parents are weird. Not bad-weird, but like quasi-hippie weird, and Terry's just a little off-kilter. Scouts helped him relate to other kids a bit more, but now there's ghosts, and knowing how to tie a knot and so forth is really helpful. 

I think Terry tries to pretend people call him "Moon" because he's into wolves and wears a wolf mask, but the other guys in the scout troop know the truth. He's never gonna live that down. Ah, well. 

That'll do it! 

Cairn: The Oozy Chipmunk

Yesterday was the beginning of our final Cairn adventure! Here's last time.

It's been a few weeks since the death of Brock Westarwart. It's now early autumn, the days still long and warm, and the denizens of Cairn are starting to harvest the stuff that gets harvested at this time of year. 

One afternoon, Snootabur Shadowbough gets a letter from her mother, who lives on a peanut farm outside of Cairn. Her mom asks if Snoot can visit - there's a "wee problem." Just if she has time.

Snoot immediately finds the other Traveling Knights and translates. If mom says it's a "wee problem," it's probably a bigger issue than she's letting on. Also she never says "just if you have time" unless it's something immediate. The four of them head out of town and reach the farm as the shadow lengthen and twilight falls.

Snootabur's mother, Kinkin Shadowbough, is out working the fields in her adorable sun hat and greets them all warmly (she recognizes Rumdiggle Sunsong as the composer of "Yeet the Noodle" and says that she often sings it to herself while working, which delights Rummy). She takes them to the edge of her farm and shows them the issue - there's a whole section where the peanuts have been dug up and removed, and the area brushed over to hide the tracks. 

This, of course, is what Russelet Leatherwind is great at. He examines the area and finds that the trails leads into the woods, where he finds multiple sets of tracks. Snoot looks carefully and sees that the tracks look like they belong to pika, which is weird. Pika absolutely would take peanuts from the farm without asking (pika have a loose sense of property and ownership), but they wouldn't cover their tracks because they wouldn't think there was anything wrong with what they were doing. The Knights follow the trail (Kinkin goes back into the house and starts on dinner), and they wind up in a clearing between three oaks.

Ratatosk Longberry scampers up the tree and talks to a bird there, and the bird informs him that the pika dug into a hollow beneath the tree. Rummy plays a song to reveal hidden things, but nothing appears (Russelet easily spots the covering on the hole, however). The Knights brush back the covering and find the snoot of a young pika.

Snootabur asks this pika ("I'm a lookout! I never looked out before so I don't know if I did it right...") to talk to an adult, and a grown pika emerges. He introduces himself as Tritch Diggerheart, and confirms that it was his people who ate the peanuts. They covered their tracks, though, because they're being pursued by a stalker (a wolf). 

The stalker has been hunting them for a few days, and there's something wrong with it. They had to drop the provisions they were carrying and the stalker ate them, and it also took one of their number (at this Tritch becomes quiet and somber). They didn't approach the farm because they didn't want to lead the stalker there; for the same reason, they haven't headed towards Cairn.

Snootabur tells them to gather everyone up, and they head back to the family farm. Kinkin is happy to have visitors ("och, I haven't had so much company since your father passed!") and starts working on a bigger batch of peanut stew ("Snoot, asks your friends if they eat crickets, I can't remember!" - by the way, Kinkin Shadowbough sounds exactly like Nicky from GBBO, and I wish I had a supercut of her talking). Rummy turns into a bear and plops down in front of the farmhouse, and Russelet takes to the sky to see if he can find the stalker.

It isn't hard. He finds the creature stumbling through the forest. It's obviously in bad shape; Russelet can hear it panting and whining. He flies back and warns the others, and they take up positions to watch. When it breaks the treeline and sees the Rummy-Bear, it snarls and prepares to charge, but Russelet puts two sleep arrows in its snout and it collapses.

Rummy holds it down (just to be sure) and Snoot fashions a quick muzzle for it. Ratatosk looks it over, and sees bites on its haunches - it's clearly been driven out of its pack. He guesses the stalker might have been poisoned or sickened somehow, and he senses a hint of Unnatural on - or in? - the creature. He decides that it may have eaten something that did this, and mixes up a quick emetic. 

The wolf responds quickly, vomiting up the contents of its stomach, and then shakes off the poison and scampers off into the woods (away from the damn bear). Ratatosk pulls on a pair of gloves and examines the goop, and finds, horribly, two bodies within. One is a pika, obviously the one that the troop lost. The other is a chipmunk, horribly mangled...but somehow the body is still bleeding. 

Ratatosk assembles the Knights and explains this, and they decide to split up. Russelet flies back to Cairn to fetch Whisper Greendawn, the priestess. Snootabur finds Tritch and tells him that they've recovered the body; Tritch quietly informs her that the dead pika was his husband. Kinkin offers him a spot in the Shadowbough family plot, and Tritch tearfully accepts. They bury the pika, marking the grave with the traditional pika headstone - one word, "Stay."

The Knights fashion a litter to take the chipmunk's body towards Cairn, and meet Russ and Whisper on the way. She casts a cleansing spell and drives something away from the body, some powerful, but worse, deliberate magic. Ratatosk has seen this kind of necromancy before, back when the Knights encountered the mysterious and horrifying Blood Walkers. The oozy chipmunk carcass stops bleeding and now just smells gross rather than gross and Unnatural, so the Knights decide to burn it just to be safe.

That done, they decide to get some rest and then head into the woods and try to track backwards and find where the stalker ate the chipmunk to begin with. Russelet goes to find a tracker and woodsman he knows to get a sense of where the wolf pack's territory generally is. If there are more of these bleeding chipmunks out there, the Knights need to find and eradicate them.

Character Creation: Dire Roads

It's like a regular road, but bigger and more snarly.

The Game: Dire Roads
The Publisher: Battleaxes & Brimstone
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I gotta start alternating genres. I legit had moments where I was thinking "wait, I did this, right? Generic fantasy RPG that thinks it's a more innovative/evolved take on D&D?" but then I remembered I was thinking of HârnMaster. This, at least, isn't up its own ass the way that game is, but it uses a proprietary deck of cards and eeeeehhhhh if you're gonna do a card-based game (which I fully support) either use a standard playing card deck or at least a Tarot, both of which are available on the cheap. 

This deck is pretty cool, I will admit. The deck has you draw cards coded by color and result, you might get a blue card that gives you "Yes But" or a red card that gives you "Disastrously No," and then abilities let you shift the results of different colors, that kind of thing. There might some accessibility issues surrounding color, of course, but I don't know, I haven't seen the cards, so maybe they're marked in such a way that would permit differentiation even without seeing the colors (a la the train cards in Ticket to Ride). 

Well, anyway, I've got a few hours before Cairn today, so let's make a road dyer or whatever the hell.

Oh, right, there's no setting in this game. Again. Next game I'm doing is going to have a goddamn setting.

Step One: Start with a concept. But how? Why? There's no setting! My concept is "adventurer", or more honestly, "board game piece." Fine, I'm a goddamn shoe. 

OK, let's try to be less bitter. (Sorry, I tweaked my back yesterday and I'm grouchy.) Ah, OK, there's this:

In fairness there's a whole section on using things like colors and shapes to inspire a character concept. I usually use songs. Actually, fuck it, let's do that. Over to you, iTunes library!

I really love this song. I have a whole video that plays in my head when I hear it, and it's completely inappropriate for this purpose (not that it's NSFW or anything, it's just about a family at Xmas and that's not what Dire Roads is about). But let's boil the song down a bit - it's about family tension and obligation to get along even when you really don't want to be here. So let's make an adventurer who doesn't want to be here. Let's assume that one of the other characters in a hypothetical group is a relative - I think I'd prefer parent just to hammer home the obligatory nature of the relationship, but older sibling would work, too. My guy perhaps has some skill at adventuring in some capacity, but he'd really rather be doing his own thing, but feels obliged to follow his dad around looking for treasure. Just for now.

OK, I think that's a good enough start. What's next? Step Two is Heritage. Let's have a look. Well, the Dwarf section starts off talking about how important family is to them, so that seems a pretty good fit. Cool, I'm a dwarf. What does that give me? I can treat a "Yes, But" as a "Yes" when working metal (bet that doesn't come up much) and if I drink I can get "Tankard Mail"; basically drunken armor. Cool, moving on.

Step Three is Abilities. Abilities are ranked, and ranks assigned thusly:

I also get to upgrade Physical Toughness by one rank (because I'm a dwarf), and I can't go higher than Formidable in anything. 

OK, well, what the heck is my dwarf good at? I don't think he's a physical powerhouse, I think that's dad. He's more of a scholar, maybe even magic-user, so probably Magical Prowess and Lore Mastery should be my Formidables. 

I get four at Imposing, so let's take Stealth, Academic Intelligence, Ranged Combat, and Raw Athleticism.

My weakest two are definitely Willpower and Social Grace - my dwarf is easily cowed, especially by dad. Everything else is Average (except Physical Toughness gets bumped up to Imposing). 

Step Four is Gear! Let's see, do I hate this game's equipment rules? No, because I don't have to shop with money. Thank goodness. OK, I get Apparel, a Kit, and a Weapon. Sweet. Wait, hang on, no place to write to down. Can't be that important (in fairness there's room on the second page of the sheet, but I didn't print that and I ain't gonna). For completeness' sake, let's say my dwarf has a Scholar's Kit, Adventuring Outfit, and I think a War Hammer (dad insisted), though he's not great at using it. 

Step Five is magic! Since I have Magical Prowess at Formidable, I get one Arcane spell for every Ability at Imposing marked with purple (a pentacle, so yeah, I guess there are symbols as well as colors, nice job, guys). Anyway, that gives me...three spells. They have to be Formidable or less in power (this isn't explained very well, but I think that's how it works), except for the one that has to be Imposing; I'm capped by the level of the Ability in question. So I have three Abilities that give me spells (Academic Intelligence, Lore Mastery, and Magical Prowess), two of which are Formidable, one is Imposing. OK, cool. Let's see the list. 

Hmm. There are a bunch of styles of magic, but not all of them work conceptually with my meek little dwarf. Let's say that he's interested in extraplanar stuff and start my search for spells in the Exothurgy sphere. 

Ooh, well, let's take Anchor (allowing me to prevent another creature to leave this plane of existence, including teleport), because I also get the Reverse, which is Teleport. I'll take Great Step, which is line-of-sight teleport (Teleport proper is to a frequented place). And, finally, I'll take Vile Displacement (teleport a target into a solid object). My guy hates that spell, but his father loves it - "Better than War Hammer to the face! Love it when they merge with rocks and wiggle!" Ew, dad, no.

Step Six is description and stuff. We'll say my dwarf is average for a dwarf, but shorter than dad, who's tall enough to pass for a short human ("I'm a giant dwarf! Ha-HA!" "Ugh, dad.") He's also skinny for a dwarf, largely because rich food gives him a tummyache and like, all dwarven food is rich. He's meek, he's embarrassed to cast spells in public, and he mumbles.

Step Seven...actually all subsequent steps are finishing detail kinds of things. So let's finish up. 

Strobror Armorclad is the son of the mighty Strabre Armorclad, one of the biggest and baddest adventurer/warrior dwarves in existence. Strabre got the ol' itch for adventure, kissed his wife goodbye (she's used to this shit) and took their eldest son Strobror off on his maiden journey! Strobror...is not entirely thrilled. 

Strobror wonders if he's got some human, or even halfling, in his heritage somewhere. He likes being underground and working with metal, sure, but he also loves to read. He's not into quaffing beer or eating RED MEAT OFF THE BONE, he eats like a bird and is much more interested in the lattice-work of stone crystals and how that might teach us something about planar travel. Strabre doesn't get him, and figures that his son just needs to get out there and crack some skulls with a hammer to really find his inner dwarf. Strobror is not fucking interested, but he does love (and is a little lottle lot intimidated by) his dad, and figures this can't go on too long, right? Just for now.

Strobror, like I said, is of average dwarven height but is skinny. He wears armor that his uncle made, but doesn't love it (though he admits it fits well and kinda makes him look badass?). He's got his mother's red hair and his dad's black eyes, and his beard comes in thick but weirdly soft. His nickname as a child, in fact, was "Softchin," and his dad still calls him that sometimes, despite his protests. 

And I think that'll do it! I actually don't hate this game, I just wish there were an interesting setting with it. 

Character Creation: Expert Nova

It's Spanish for "expert doesn't g-" hang on, I feel like I made that joke already.

The Game: Expert Nova
The Publisher: Anders Blixt
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Nothing much to write home about, here; d20-roll-under system, designed for modern-ish day adventure games. Looks perfectly serviceable. 

If I were going to run a game and wanted to use a trad system, what would I use? I think I might go for AGE, Cypher, or Savage Worlds, all of which are easy enough to get one's head around in the bare-bones, but have a lot of support. That said, I think this game would work just fine. It's not terribly flavorful on its own, but on the other hand, not everything needs to be a great big hardcover.

Well, anyway, let's do a character. There's not a default setting, but there's an example one included, set in 1950s Australia and basically taking on the same genre territory as They Came From Beneath The Sea! (Which, fun fact, was I think my last published RPG work, though I wasn't credited. C'est la vie.)

The book lists a few professions that would be useful, one of which is zoologist, and it also talks about how post-WWII Australia deliberately tried to get European immigrants to move there. So we'll say my character is from a very small village in England, and grew up fascinated by exotic animals (about the most interesting creature around his house was the odd hedgehog). After the War, with most of his friends dead, he wanted out of the country anyway, and picking up his studies in zoology seemed like a great idea. Insert joke here about how the fauna of Australia wants to kill you.

If the game is set in the early 1950s, and I want my character to be a WWII vet but to have been very young when he went to war, we'll say he was 18 in 1940, meaning he was born in 1922, meaning he's probably about 30 now. His name is Hubert Coolidge (he much prefers to be called by his last name than "Hubert"). 

Seems like the Qualified Pro is the suitable template, here:

My four Traits are Push, Knack, Sense, and Grit. Interestingly, nothing directly related to intelligence, which I kind of like (Chill works on the same model). I feel like Hubert might be pretty strong in Push and Knack (both physical Traits), but maybe a little weaker in Grit since the war? I could split up the points evenly and have 14 in each, but I think I'll shave 4 points out of Grit and put Push and Knack up to 16. 

Skills! I'll take Pathfinder, Scholar, Scientist, Signaller, and Soldier. I'll put Scientist at 16 just because I feel like that's what Coolidge is most passionate about, Solider can be at 14, Pathfinder at 12, the other two at 10. 

Fluent in English, obviously. We'll say Good in French, and Broken in German and Latin. 

Attributes! HP is 13 (average of Push and Grit). Damage bonus is +1. Speed is 5, Load (huh-huh) is 16 slots. 

Coolidge is lean and fit. He's got brown hair that he can't seem to let himself grow out too much, brown eyes, and a weird habit of going "oh!" when he sees a cool animal. His hands also shake a little sometimes, but he likes to write in his journal (usually about animals) to calm that down a little. 

Nice and simple!

Atlantis: You Don't Vote For Kings

Strange birds in a flying city is no basis for a system of government. Here's last time.

Our heroes have arrived in the Flying City of the Uluka. Akala rents them a dwelling (finding one that has stair access, which is no mean feat; most of the structures in the Flying City are designed for those that can fly). The three sets of Wings of Burrill that the heroes have been using are also...maybe not confiscated, but taken away to be recharged and to avoid visitors who don't know the traffic patterns flying around. 

They settle in, and the next night they attend a kind of state dinner for the candidates for King of the Skies. Akala is the latest competitor (technically you can throw your hat into the ring right up until the Council makes the decision, but in practice it's better to get in early so as to drum up more support). The other three competitors and their entourages attend, giving the heroes - especially Akala - a chance to size them up.

Chizoga is an Uluka from the nation of Dar, and is a powerful and practiced sorceress. She has studied for the past few years at the Institute at Dardanus. Her Wisdom deed is the construction of "kits" for sorcery, basically small boxes that contain glyphs, components, and instructions for casting spells. She talks with Eithne (a fellow sorceress) about them, and explains that basically these are meant as a teaching tool, or a scaffold for people with magical talent but little ability to improvise. Chizoga also infiltrated the slave pits of Raz-Mar and extracted an Uluka noble who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery; this was her deed of Bravery. For her deed of Compassion, she has traveled to Eria to sing to the Screaming Giant (a gigantic wolf chained near a geyser) every year.

Allunga hails from the Curracurrang mountains, but was captured and sold into slavery in Yallock, and fought in the gladiatorial rings. While there, he performed his deed of Compassion: he spared the life of his Ophidian opponent, although doing so cost him an eye. That Ophidian, Yog-Ulum, is now his companion and assistant. Allunga's deed of Wisdom was mapping the jungles of Yallock, including a few of the Ophidian settlements (as a cautionary measure so other Uluka can avoid them). For his deed of Bravery, Allunga entered the cave at the top of Mount Skardor, a mountain in Mu made of a mysterious metal. He retrieved some of that metal and used it to fashion a machete and to plate his chakram. 

Callimachus, from the Atlantean capital of Olokunia, built himself up as a merchant and translator. He is expert at navigating Atlantean culture, and in fact his deed of Wisdom was negotiating with the Ruling Council of Olokunia to construct housing for Uluka in the city. His test of Bravery, in a related matter, was addressing said Council in common Atlantean rather than High Atlantean (this may not seem like much, but it's actually a big deal - you don't address people of "greater" social station in the common vernacular, and Callimachus was actually caned for it). His test of Compassion was using his family fortune to train doctors and teachers among the Uluka outside the Flying City, so that they could return to the City and work with the Owl-people there.

Akala, meanwhile, firms up her deeds. Her deed of Compassion is easy enough; she (and her companions) freed the slaves of Khem, Her deed of Bravery was the infiltration and liberation of the Isle of Gorgos, and her deed of Wisdom was the reactivation of the Vril pyramid in the sunken city of Elapi. After the dinner ends, the heroes retire and plan their next moves.

Part of "campaigning" for King of the Skies is demonstrating and explaining one's plans for the Flying City. The biggest concern for the City, of course, is that the city is falling. It's doing so slowly, but the Vril power supply is waning, and so the Owl-people either need a place to set the city down or recharge the Vril engines. Chizoba favors recharging the city, harnessing magic and Vril to restore it. Allunga favors putting the city down, and is willing to undertake a military action to find a suitable place. Callimachus puts forth the least popular notion: get help from Atlantis to fix the Vril tech. Akala talks with her companions, Eithne especially, and firms up her plans. Basically, they want to find a place to "dock" the City, but also attempt to recharge the engines. They decide that the mountains in Khem are a good place, given Alaka's political connections there.

Eithne spends the next couple of days working with Akala on a model of the Flying City and a working "dock" in a miniature mountain range. Jengo and Imani talk with Allunga, and Imani brings up the fact that Uluka aren't typically known as a warlike people - is taking a resting place for the city really a viable option? Allunga explains that it's not his first choice (war never is), but he views it as self-preservation, and killing in self-preservation should be pretty understandable. (Imani concedes that it is.)

Akala unveils the model, and it's very well-received. Of course, there's more to politicking than just making oneself look good, and the other candidates are not idle...

Movie #775: Stargate

Stargate is a sci-fi movie starring James Spader, Kurt Russell, Jaye Davidson, Mili Avital, Viveca Lindfors, Alexis Cruz, Djimon Hounsou, Leon Rippy, and John Diehl. It's directed by Roland Emmerich, two years before he made literally all the money with Independence Day. 

Egyptologist and linguist Daniel Jackson (Spader) gets brought in to a top-secret project funded by mysterious rich person Catherine Langford (Lindfors) - they've found a device that apparently opens a wormhole in space. Jackson provides the last few answers they need to activate it, and they send a troop of soldiers, Jackson, and suicidal colonel O'Neil (Russel) through to check it out. Turns out it leads to a planet that looks a lot like ancient Egypt, populated by the descendants of ancient Egyptians stolen by a space parasite that possessed the body of a young man (Davidson) and is now ruling over them as a dictator called Ra. 

From there it's a white savior narrative - Jackson learns to speak their language immediately, and he and the other soldiers assemble the youths of the natives in a rag-tag group of freedom fighters. They beat back Ra's foot soldiers (including a very young Djimon Hounsou as Horus), blow up Ra's ship, and everyone but Jackson heads back through the Stargate. (Jackson stays behind, having scored himself a tasty new wife (Avital).)

So, I'll say up front that I've never watched any of the spinoff TV series. The movie itself is, let's be real, 90s fluff. Emmerich isn't swinging for the fences the way he did with ID4, Spader is clearly in it for the paycheck, Russell is fine and solid as usual, Davidson looks slinky and predatory but there's not a lot to the character. And, again, it's a white savior movie, so we pretty much know the beats going in. 

The most interesting parts of the movie, for me, are the scenes immediately following the soldiers' arrival through the Stargate, when they're exploring and suddenly realizing that Jackson can't send them home like he said he could. But then we find the natives (led by Erick Avari, playing a role not entirely dissimilar to the one he'd played later in 1999's The Mummy), and it all kind of falls into step. It's entertaining and watchable, but I'd rather watch James Spader in Wolf (or Crash, yow yow). 

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium-high

Next up: Starship Troopers, though I suspect it'll be a while because Oscar noms come out tomorrow

Character Creation: HârnMaster 3rd Ed

What is a "Hârn" and how does one master it? The world may never know.

The Game: HârnMaster 3rd Ed
The Publisher: Columbia Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

OK, in all seriousness, I hate this game already. Maybe it's mostly this particular PDF that I hate, but a) it's not bookmarked, b) there's no table of contents, c) there's an index but it doesn't give you page numbers, only section heads, which would be great for a physical copy but not so great for this and d) there's no setting info presented as such, so like...it's D&D. It's a fantasy game, it just has a very high opinion of itself. But I'm not going to wade through a 166-page PDF with no attempt to make it user-friendly to find some context for what a character is supposed to do in this game, because to all appearances the answer is "kill things and take their stuff." There's a lot of flap online when people talk about the game about it being "realistic," which is about the last thing I care about in a fantasy RPG. 

Ah, well. Guess my sensibilities have evolved somewhat since the fucking 80s. Let's make a character. It involves a lot of random tables, which I actually kind of like. 

I have no GM, so I'll skip step one. On to step two! First we roll a d100 for species...oh, well, there's actually a 97% chance of being human (which is what I rolled). I'll assume my GM is one of those hoopy froods who'll let me choose my character's sex since, as the book says, "players play their own gender more convincingly." Yeah. Moving along. 

Rolling for birthday involves a d12 and a d30. I do not have a d30, obviously, why would I. Fortunately, the internet is right here for me. 11 and 25 gives me 25 Navek as my birthday, and my sunsign is Masara. Does that mean anything to me? It does not.

Birthplace would be next, except the tables I need aren't in this book. Cool, cool. Let's assume Culture is Feudal, since that's the most common one. Social class is typically chosen by the GM depending on the campaign, but since it's just me I'll roll for it. Serf! Sure, sounds fine. That's totally why I play RPGs is to play as a serf in a feudal setting. 

Moving on! I'm the sixth child of (hang on) 9, good grief. Both parents are alive and living together, good for them. I'm also...distantly related to the clan-head. Oh, wait, then I roll for my father. He's the child of the clan-head. Nifty, grandad is the clan-head. And then estrangement...oh, shit, I'm an outcast. Finally something interesting. 

Height: 66 inches (5'6"). Frame: Medium. Weight: 145lbs (but I'm glad it's not random, it's based on height vs. frame). Comeliness: Attractive. Medium complexion (whatever the hell that means), blond hair, blue eyes. 

Attributes! It's all random, still, so:

Strength 6 (ugh)
Stamina 10
Dexterity 12
Agility 11
Eyesight 11 (seriously?)
Hearing 10 (yep, we're doing this)
Smell 7 (how does he smell? terrible!)
Voice 7 (squawk, squawk)

Gonna skip medical, because I don't wanna roll on the "you get a debilitating thing" table. Over to personality attributes! 

Intelligence 8
Aura 7
Will 10

Morality, they recommend you choose, but since I'm choosing nothing else about this dude, I'll roll for it. Sure, now I roll high. Principled, why not. 

Not rolling for a mental disorder, thanks. And...oh, here we go.

I can't even

Weirdly, there's no slot on the sheet for sexuality. There is for everything else. Guess it's not important. 

Deity, interestingly, I'm expected to choose. I'll pick Larani, the lady of paladins. I like the god of riddles, but my guy ain't too bright. Devotion doesn't require intelligence, however. Piety! 15. Moving on.

Occupation! Of course, my options are limited, being a serf. I'm a farmer. Rather, my parents were farmers. That tracks.

Skills. Oy. OK, first I gotta calculate the numbers for the automatic skills, which involves averaging some Attributes and then applying a formula...anyway, it's on the sheet if you care. I get Agriculture, Animalcraft, and Weatherlore from being a farmer, and then I have 5 "option points" that I can use to open other skills.

Well, since I'm an outcast, maybe I should have some "survive in the wilderness" or "steal shit" kinds of skills? Sure, we'll take Foraging, Survival, Fishing, Swimming, and Sling. 

Equipment and Funds and Contacts are the last things, but like, equipment is going to be grubby clothes, a knife, a sling, and that's basically it. Contacts...there's a whole system for it, but there's nowhere to write it on this sheet, and honestly I kind of like it if, since he's an outcast, he ain't got nobooooooody. So sure.

Stellan was the sixth child in a family of nine, which wouldn't be so bad except a) his grandfather was the clan head and b) all of his siblings are dark haired with brown eyes and Stellan has fair hair and blue eyes. No one in the clan looks like that, though there was a traveling trader who came through the area last year who very much looked like that...anyway, Stellan's grandfather personally booted him from the clan and the area, and though Stellan doesn't know it (because Stellan is not very bright), his grandfather might well have saved his life by doing that. 

Anyway, Stellan has taken to life on the road as well as can be expected. He knows how to fish and to find food, and he can work as a farmhand, so he figures he should be able to find someplace to settle down eventually...provided the exciting, magical world of Hârn doesn't sweep him up first! 

There, done. I have no idea what the appeal of this game is. 

Movie #774: The French Connection

The French Connection is a cop drama starring Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey, Tony Lo Bianco, Bill Hickman, Marcel Bozzuffi, and Frédéric de Pasquale. It's one of those movies that even if you haven't seen, it feels familiar.

Two cops, "Popeye" Doyle (Hackman) and "Cloudy" Russo (Scheider), wind up coming across a plan to bring in a shitload of heroin from France, courtesy of wealthy French businessman Charnier (Rey), using famous French actor Henri Devereaux's (de Pasquale) car as a smuggling method. Popeye and Cloudy follow the prospective New York buyer, Boca (Lo Bianco), wind up running afoul of Charnier's hit man Nicoli (Bozzuffi), and eventually it culminates in a shootout/bust during which Popeye accidentally guns down a federal agent (Hickman), Charnier gets away, and...nothing really changes. 

That's a very brief summary of a not-brief movie, but much of the movie is a documentary-style ride-along as Popeye conducts the investigation. We get to see him shake people down for information and generally be a racist, violent dickbag, overwork his partner, and engage in the famous car chase beneath an elevated train.

(Side note: That chase was filmed in live traffic, and not all of the accidents depicted were staged. We watched a "making of" video with director William Friedkin and producer Philip D'Antoni as they talked about that chase, and the overwhelming vibe was "boy, it's a fucking miracle no one was killed." It's a very exciting chase, though.)

The French Connection is weird in some ways; it incorporates noir-ish elements of cynicism and the "rogue cop" archetype, and it's an interesting contrast to cop dramas that would show up later courtesy of Dick wolf and other Dragnet enthusiasts. The cops here aren't "good" people; about the best we can say about Popeye is that he's not on the take and actually seems to care about doing his job (but even that's more "dangerous obsession" than "adherence to duty"). But then again, the cops aren't effective, either, because although a couple of the middlemen like Devereaux and Nicoli get busted or killed, Charnier escapes, goes back to his life of luxury in France, and presumably the addicts of New York find another source of heroin. So what really is the point? No overarching "win" to justify Doyle's violent methods (or, like, the Fed he gunned down, which never really gets addressed), just the never-ending grind of the system. 

So with that cheery note: Hackman and Scheider turn in really compelling performances (this story is based on a real events, though of course we never know how well anything is represented). The story is basic and linear, but again, it's presented more as documentary than drama, so there doesn't need to be a big twist. The "twist" is that there's no big reveal, no sneering villain that makes it personal, and no real resolution. So, yeah, very much a seminal film in neo-noir and cop drama. 

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Stargate

Pugmire: Good Ol' Fashioned Dungeon Crawl

Yesterday was Pugmire! Here's last time.

Our hairy heroes wake up at No Quarter, the rowdy bar/inn in Port Matthew. Peppa Papillon, rooming with Boomer Pitbull (you put the small dog with the big dog, obvs), sees Boomer get up and immediately fall to the floor. She checks on him, concerned, and he's feeling fine and able to talk, but his limbs aren't working right. Peppa casts a healing spell to see if that works (it doesn't), and then calls the others. Dire Newfoundland hoists Boomer back onto his bunk, and Petunia Pibble heads downstairs to get some water. Mari, the owner, is setting up for the day, and when Petunia explains what's happening, she asks if Boomer fought Roger yesterday. Petunia thinks back through the haze (a lot happened yesterday); Boomer didn't exactly fight Roger, but did ask for a demonstrate of his nerve attack. Mari nods. "That's it. Sometimes people react weirdly and their limbs go noodly the next day. It'll wear off soon." 

Petunia takes a bowl of water and some bread up to Boomer and explains the situation. Boomer is more annoyed than anything, Petunia tells him she'll make sure he has a book to look at today so he has something to do while his nerves start working again.

At this point the dogs are summoned downstairs. A very well-heeled cat - gray of fur and blue of eye, flanked by six armed guards - walks in and asks to see them. Four of them come down ("Aren't there five of you?" "Yeah, but the other one got noodled." One of the guards: "Oh, yeah, my cousin got noodled once. It was really, really funny.") and sit with the cat, who introduces herself as Tora von Korat, Minister of Defense.

Turns out Buddy von Rex disappeared late last night or early this morning. After the fight with the Black Coil Mercs, he was taken to the Ministry of Health, and someone apparently took him right out of his bed (this is why Tora is investigating personally; Buddy is the mayor's best friend). She doesn't actually suspect the dogs, but they were the last ones to see Buddy (other than the Ministry staff, as Dire points out), so she's covering her bases. Peppa, always ready to help, asks if there's anything they can do, and Tora says that Zhoris Venomchilde, the now-captured leader of the Black Coil, hasn't talked, but if the dogs think they can get him to talk they're welcome to try. Likewise, she gives them her blessing to have a look at Buddy's room. 

The dogs decide to start there, since they don't know if they'll have any luck getting Zhoris to sing (or...hiss, I guess) either. They head across town to the Ministry of Health, a four-story building in the Spire District of Port Matthew. A cat in a head scarf welcomes them in and shows them to Buddy's room - a private room in the interior of the first floor. It's pretty gruesome; Petunia searches the room and determines that Buddy was brought in and cleaned up, but then someone came in and picked him up, resulting in some of his bandages falling off. There are bootprints leading out of the room, which Petunia deduces belong to a cat (based on how weight is distributed), but a pretty big one. They follow the tracks down a hall and to a dead end - nothing here but some stacked-up debris.

The dogs ask the cat-nurse about the layout, here, and she says that the top two floors are research and offices, the next two are hospital and treatment, and the two floors below ground are sealed off and no one goes there. They can tell she's holding something back, though, so Gelert Sausagedog presses a little ("we're on a mission from the Minister of Defense herself!"), and the nurse relents: this isn't the first disappearance. People, usually vagabonds and sailors, used to go missing sometimes, but when Grizabella von Angora was made Minister of Health that seemed to stop. There actually wasn't a Minister of Health before her, the Ministry just kind of ran on its own, but when Blinky von Rex became mayor she decided someone should actually be in charge of this place. 

They discuss going upstairs and seeing what's there, but Peppa pokes at the pile of pstuff and discovers there's a counterweight - pull down on the junk, and a door slides open. The nurse shudders, and says that these traboules leading to the lower floors are spotted around the hospital, but no one goes down there. Sometimes you can hear...things. The dogs decide that's probably where they need to go, and have the nurse-cat get some orderlies to make sure no one comes down behind them. And then they descend.

They land in a relatively empty room, and follow the blood trail out through a door into a larger chamber. The blood fades in the middle of the room, though, so the dogs are kind of on their own. The room they're in has multiple exits; checking one to the west, it leads to a hallway that dead-ends. "Weird," thinks Petunia, but none of them can find anything different.

An exit to the east leads to another corridor, but they can't see further than the next corner, so they try the exit to the south instead. Another chamber, this one containing nothing but debris, and another door to the south. Dire, though, finds a hidden door in the wall to the east. Petunia checks the doorway to the south, and finds...something weird. Four rats are standing around the corpse of a dog, chanting and waving their hands. The corpse is adorned with strange symbols drawn in white. Petunia enters the room and, true to form, greets them warmly ("Hi, whatcha doing?"). Two of the rats turn, distracted, and the other two yell at them to "keep going!" But the magic is already disrupted, and the corpse-dog leaps up, yowling.

The rats bolt through a door to the south, and the zombie-dog charges, snapping and biting. The other dogs file in, Sausagedog combat-rolls into the room to pop up behind it and strike with his axe, and Dire clunks it with his war-hammer. The zombie isn't really fazed, but then Petunia hurls an acid arrow at it and its innards melt, and one that's done a couple of blows from the others drop it.

Petunia and Sausagedog search the room. Petunia doesn't recognize the symbols drawn on the dog-corpse, but clearly they're necromantic in some way. Peppa finds a pot of flour nearby; obviously the source of the symbols. Peppa and Dire try the secret door to the east in the last room, and discover it leads into a room stocked with dried herbs and desiccated body parts strung from the ceiling.

Sausagedog tries the door the rats fled through and spots a pile of objects in the corner. He approaches, and the objects roll around and stare at him - they're heads! Mostly rodent! They roll toward him making a horrible chittering noise, and then wash over him like a wave and bite repeatedly. Sausagedog yells for help, and Petunia enters just as Sausagedog rolls back away from the head-pile. Petunia throws a web spell at them, figuring to tie them up and burn them, but misses.

Peppa comes running and yells for Dire, but Dire is busy stuffing his pockets with herbs and misses the call. Dire also didn't have a light source, so he suddenly finds himself in pitch-darkness. Peppa makes it to the fight and heals Sausagedog, who yanks Petunia out of the head-room and slams the door. They can heard the head-pile cooing and bumping the door, but no one is interest in fighting whatever the hell that was. 

Dire blunders around in the dark for a while and eventually comes to...bars. A portcullis? "I didn't see one of these," he mutters, and then remembers he has a torch in his rucksack. He lights it and finds that he's wandered down a longer hallway, so he wanders back (it's a big U-shaped affair) and finds the others.

They barricade the door to the head-pile, and search the room with the rats a bit more. They find another portcullis, as well a door leading to the same hallway that Dire just found (the layout of this place is somewhat confounding). They search for a while longer, but then decide to go north, back to the very first large room they found, and take the hallway to the east.

That hallway corners and leads south, and behind a door they find the remains of a cook-fire and writing on the wall that rads "BEWARE OF RATS." There's yet another portcullis in the room, and through it the dogs can see huge rats' nests (they remind Dire unpleasantly of the blind rodents that he fought waaaaay back here when this was just a one-shot). Petunia tosses a boot from the corpse-dog into one of the nests, and a snout protrudes and sniffs the air. 

The dogs don't much want to fight these things, but they do need a way forward and they're not interested in dealing with that head-pile. They decide to drive off the rats, so Petunia throws a grease spell into the room, following by a torch. The rat nest goes up in flames, and the dogs spot three huge dire rats make for a back corner, but they can't quite see where they disappear to (too much smoke). When the fire dies down, they lift the portcullis (with some difficulty, though Dire rigs a rope/pulley system that works nicely), and check the rat room. 

Another portcullis in the north wall immediately upon entering the room, a door in the south wall, and a door in the north wall at the end of the room. These doors are locked (first time they've found locked doors!). Looking through the portcullis, they see tables with bodies, but the controls for the gates are on their side, so they lift the portcullis and investigate. Three corpses, two cats and a dog, all cut open post mortem, all with organs removed. Peppa thinks this is less direct necromancy and more...exploration? None of the bodies are Buddy, however.

This room, too, has a locked door in the north wall. An open door in the east wall leads into another empty storage room, and the south door in that room turns out to lead back into the rat-nest room. Sausagedog picks the lock on the south door and it leads into a storage room - stacked-up tables and chairs. A door in the south wall leads into a room with two cells, and between the bars of one is a shabby cloth hiding a portcullis - the one that Dire found when he was bumbling around in the dark. 

A room off this jail cell has several sets of bunk beds, obviously recently used. Another portcullis off the jail room leads to a similar room, but this one smells of catnip (Dire finds a little cloth bag full of the stuff hanging near a bed, which he pockets). Moving through some hallways, they find themselves at a door, behind which they can hear the cooing of the head-pile. They seem to have come full circle. 

Doing a bit of mental mapping, the figure that the necromancer-rats they saw earlier must have fled through the head-pile room, but if they made that creature it would make sense that it wouldn't hurt them. But then where did they go? There must be other exits that the dogs haven't seen. 

They backtrack through the bunk rooms and back to the room with the table storage, and find a portcullis leading sound. Dire lifts it, and they find a long, empty room with a single door at the end. Dire opens it, and too late notices a flint striking plate catch a spark. The door explodes, blowing Dire back and sealing off the doorway in rubble. "Not going that way." Dire is largely unhurt, however.

North, then! In the preceding room, Petunia taps her staff on a stone and finds it feels different than the others. Dire pulls on it and it slides away, revealing a traboule to the lower level. The dogs consider going down, but decide they'd better check the rest of this floor, just in case. 

The next few doors north dead end into a closet containing chains and rings of keys; Dire takes one, of course. They backtrack to the "dissected rodents" room and unlock the door in the north wall, and it leads into a hallway stretching east and west. At the end of the east spoke, a portcullis, and at the end of the west, a door. Petunia examines the door and smells something foul near the top - not magical, but probably a trap. She does, however, sense magic from the other end of the hallway...

The dogs sit down for a moment to rest, relight their lanterns, and decide which way to go next.

Character Creation: ROTA

I keep thinking "rota" is a food of some kind, but I may have dreamed it.

The Game: Realms of the Ancients
The Publisher: Immortal House
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Just another fantasy game, really. Sure, it's a mix of sci-fi and fantasy - the basic gist is that when you try to travel between worlds and you miss, you wind up in Limbo, and some time ago some ambitious folks figured out how to set up shop in Limbo and then transport whole star systems in. So the result is a potpourri of worlds, peoples, civilizations, with 16 playable races and so forth, wrapped around a 1d20+stat kind of resolution system. 

But y'know? I think it'd work fine at the table. It's very much not my kind of game mechanically, but I have a weird fondness for mishmash of genres and worlds, so I don't know if it's the kind of thing I'd run, but I did find myself digging the game while reading it. So that's cool. Let's make a ROTA! Or, I guess, a character, since we're not making a whole realm or ancient.

Chargen is a 12-step process (that oughta get me some interesting traffic), though a couple of them don't apply because, as usual, it's just me. Step One is concept, but folds in the three splats that characters use (species, origin, and transformation) as well as why the character is part of the "team," for whatever value of team we're dealing with. 

I read through the species, and some of them are pretty cool (I think this game could have stood to kill a few darlings, but then most games could). One of them are called Ferlines, basically if cats evolved into people instead of apes, so they're lithe and sneaky and so forth. I like those for some reason, so I think I'll lean into my proclivities and make a roguish sort of character today. Fairly easy with Ferlines, since they can defy gravity and track anyone they've been around. So we'll say my character is a spotter, getaway driver, lookout kind of guy. He's a Rogue Walker (a Ferline without a clan), exiled for stealing shit from his clan. His name is Foezar (one of the example names listed, I kinda like it). Ferline gives me Physical 1, Social 0, Technical 2.

So what's Foezar's origin? My options are Warrior, Operative, or Magus, and I think with this concept Operative is the obvious choice. I get 20 Health, 4 Energy, +2 to Social, and 2 Stat points to put where. I'm gonna put one into Physical and one into Technical. I get Infiltration and Stealth Attack as abilities, and then I get 4 skills. Let's see. I'll take Acrobatics, Vehicles, Perceiving, and Stealth. I avoided Climbing and Tracking because my species abilities give me better ways to do those things, hopefully. 

Transformation! There are a lot of fun options, but I think given the concept, Outlaw is the clear choice. That gives me +5 Health, +1 to a stat of my choice, and another Operative Skill. For the latter, I think I shall take Evasion. I'll put the stat boost into Physical. 

Oh, and, the other steps of chargen are mostly just adding together the stuff I get from the first three choices, so that actually takes me right through to Step Ten, which is (ugh) buying equipment. OK, everything else was quick, we'll give it a look. I get 200 monies.

I'll spend 5 on a baton (I think Foezar doesn't like bladed weapons; they cause too much blood and he hates to be messy). I'll spend 25 on a pistol, mostly for show (guns are loud). I'll buy a long coat for some armor, and a mask as a Charm. That's probably fine.

So now some derived traits! Just stats plus armor or charm value, that's easy enough.

So that's pretty much it! Foezar is fastidious, picky, and precise. He's a good lookout and driver, and he can fight, but he'd really rather not. Unlike some clanless Ferlines, Foezar doesn't advertise he's a Rogue Walker, he just doesn't mention a clan (for the record, he was part of the Mist Clan before his exile). Foezar has silvery-grey hair and amber eyes, and like most of his species is lean and dexterous. 

Cool, that'll do it! 

Movie #773: Evil Dead

Evil Dead, in this case, is a 2013 horror movie directed by Fede Alvarez and starring Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Jessica Lucas, Lou Tyler Pucci, and Elizabeth Blackmore. It's a remake or soft reboot or whatever of Sam Raimi's 1981 classic.

Five friends go out to the woods for a pleasant weekend of fun and hijinks! Well, no. They go out to the woods because Mia (Levy) is detoxing from heroin and wants to be isolated to get through the initial withdrawal. Her brother David (Fernandez), her RN friend Olivia (Lucas), their bookish buddy Eric (Pucci), and David's girlfriend Natalie (Blackmore) all pledge to support Mia but not to take her back to town, since she has a history of bailing on getting sober when the symptoms get too bad.

They discover, however, that the basement of the cabin contains a shitload of dead cats, a shotgun, and a book called Necronomicon Ex Mortis Naturom Demonto. It's bound in barbed wire and wrapped in a garbage bag, but Eric, being the curious little scamp he is, opens it and reads out some of the passages, awakening the evil-cam from the woods. It does what it does, possessing Mia and using her to terrorize and desecrate first herself then the others, eventually starting a rain of blood and waking an "abomination" (Randal Wilson) from the earth, which she then cuts to pieces with a chainsaw because the classics are classics for a reason.

I'll say this for Fede Alvarez, between this and Don't Breathe he knows how to make an intense movie. Isolation is a staple of horror, and one of the big...maybe not plot holes, but issues with "cabin in the woods" style horror is that the protagonists never seem to entertain getting the hell out until it's far later than it should be for that kind of thing. Here, they have a perfectly good reason for sticking put - their friend is going through heroin withdrawal, so of course she's going to hallucinate and said crazy shit. By the time it becomes clear that, no, she's not just self-harming, it's far too late. 

The original Evil Dead and Evil Dead II were gory and brutal, but this movie pulls exactly zero punches. Mia gets invaded by the evil in a truly painful and difficult-to-watch way, and the "evil molesting tree" (as Cabin in the Woods might call it) isn't even the hardest scene to watch (for my money, that'd be her cutting her tongue with the box cutter). Do we enter the realm of torture porn? Maybe, but where I think this is better than, say, much of the Saw series is that we have a strong enough sense of the characters and their relationships (for the most part; Natalie is a bit underwritten) that it feels less about what's happening and more that it's happening to these unfortunate people (again, Alavarez does this kind of thing well, see also Don't Breathe). 

There are a lot of neat little nods to the original movies and in particular Sam Raimi's style of filmmaking; the quick cuts and zooms and the evil-cam flying through the woods, but it always feels appropriate in context and isn't an obvious HEY LOOK A CALL-OUT (that's only present in the post-credits scene where Bruce Campbell shows up, but that's so brief it feels more like a quick joke). Overall, it's a well-done horror movie and it does not have a lot of rewatch value, because it's too gory and intense to be something fun to watch in a group. I do, however, want to give Evil Dead Rise a look now.

My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: The French Connection

Epyllion: Controlled Burn

Last night we completed a ...story? arc? in our Epyllion game. Off to Dragonia!

Recall that last time, the clutch found the fabled and frightening serpent, which agreed not to eat Zeblek on the condition that the drakes delivered of equal size. Not really interested in capturing living creatures for the snake (the clutch is far too soft-hearted for that), they decide that the eggs of the mighty dison will work. 

Stars consults dris book and finds that dison generally like to live on rolling hills and plains. They lay their eggs in the shallow valleys at the bottoms of hills and then lean on them, rather than sitting on them. The drake finds such a place with a flock/herd (flerd?) of dison. They decide to wait for morning, and then have Zeblek and Toverin distract the beasts while OB sneaks in and nicks a couple of eggs. OB cleverly makes some mock eggs, and Zeblek borrows some string and fashions a makeshift string instrument.

Come morning, OB calls on the void moon and renders themself invisible. Zeblek plays his weird banjo ("anyway, here's Wonderwall") while Toverin sings to the dison ("moooonk?"). OB slips by the flerd and steals a couple of eggs, replacing them with the fakes dre made. 

Stars, meanwhile, stays at the edge of the woods and paces nervously. Unfortunately this looks to the dison like a predator getting ready to strike, and they start puffing up and staring at drem. ("Should we charge at it, quacking?" "...perhaps."). Toverin alters the lyrics to the song to warn Stars, and OB returns with the eggs. The drakes flee into the woods, the dison none the wiser.

They find the serpent and give it the eggs, and it gulps them down and flops over in an egg coma. The drakes warn it that there's going to be a ritual burn, so it better leave the woods. It acknowledges them and goes to sleep.

From here, the drakes head back to their camp. OB finishes dris tapestry of the beavmingo to give the Flyleaf, the woodcutter. Zeblek laments the loss of dris shadow - and the apparent inability to call on the moons' magic. The other dragons recommend flying back up to the plateau and apologizing to the elder dragon that took his shadow off originally, and maybe asking for help. Zeblek whines about it a bit, but decides that this really is the best course of action. Dre asks for moral support, and Toverin goes along (OB is busy and Stars can't fly). 

They get to the top of the plateau at noon, and Zeblek finds the black-scaled elder. Dre gets the elder's attention and apologizes, and explains what happened and where the shadow went. The elder accepts the apology and calls on the void moon, and applies a bit of shadow to Zeblek. The shadow is only half there, but the elder tells Zeblek dre'll need to nourish it. Zeblek asks for help learning the prayer that the elder tried to teach them the other day ("HJOOUUUMMMM"), and the elder, Zeblek, and Toverin spread their wings in prayer.

Meanwhile, Stars and OB seek out Flyleaf. When they find them, though, Flyleaf is engaged in an argument with a larger dragon. "Niruth," dre says, "I know the burn is supposed to start tomorrow, but-"

"It will start at dawn."

"But the turferant herd! There hasn't been one here in years-"

"This is the tradition. This is the way." And Niruth flies off.

OB and Stars emerge, and OB shows Flyleaf the tapestry. Dre praises OB and puts the tapestry in a pack, and the drakes ask about the argument dre just had. Flyleaf explains that Niruth is the Firelighter, and dre is going to start the burn at dawn no matter what. But the turferants, not the brightest of creatures at the best of times, tend to linger on the edges of the forest, and they travel in a long line rather than a clump. When the fire starts, they might run into the woods instead of away. OB and Stars offer to help, and Flyleaf agrees to take to the skies and signal if dre sees the herd first. Zeblek and Toverin land with their clutch about now, and they go searching for these mysterious creatures.

Stars consults dris book again, finding what limited information is available about these mighty creatures. They usually favor swamps, so the clutch heads to the western edge of the Black Forest where there's some marshland. They search for a while and eventually find big, schlorpy footprints. Following these, they find the tail end of the turferant herd.

The turferants are curious beasts. Bigger than some dragons (but smaller than elders), they have hard shells, weird furry faces with long trunks, and cunning paws that they use to strip leaves off of branches. The younglings are at the end of the line, guarded by two large bull turferants. As the dragons approach, these bulls square up, but Toverin tells them the clutch comes in peace. 

The dragons explain the situation - there's going to be a burn tomorrow. As promised, turferants aren't terribly bright, but they do understand the advice to "keep to the wets." The bulls tell the clutch that someone needs to tell the matriarch, at the very head of the line, to bring the herd darkward so that the can form a group rather than a line. 

Toverin takes to the skies and swoops in, dodging branches and rocks that the protective turferants at the head of the line hurl. Dre lands and explains the situation to the matriarch, and relays the message: bring the herd darkward. Keep to the wets. The herd moves west into the swamps, and OB calls on the storm moon call down rain to protect the beasts. The herd is big, however, and dre can only cover about a quarter of it. So one by one, the other drakes call rain, first Stars and then Toverin. That leaves the last quarter of the herd to Zeblek...but is dris shadow strong enough?

Zeblek digs deep and calls on the storm moon with all dris might, and a downpour falls on the herd! The drakes stay with the herd until dawn, and they see Niruth take to the skies and belch fire down into the Black Forest. 

And then a quick montage: The turferant herds trumpeting as they watch from the safety of the wets. The great serpent (with two egg-shaped bumps) slithering out of danger. The fire sweeping over the mighty bearclam harmlessly. The beavmingos looking up from the bottom of the pond at the firestorm. The dison munching grass placidly as the smoke rises from the woods.

The danger passed, Toverin talks to the matriarch again. She pledges that if the drakes have need of the herd, they should trumpet, and if the herd is within earshot, the turferants will come.

With that honor bestowed, the drakes gather up their stuff and move along to their next adventure!