End of Year Assessments and Aspirations

 

Gaming projects I've been noodling around with and their working titles, an incomplete list:

 

Flanaess Sector: reskinning AD&D 1E as a space opera game, with new classes, spaceship combat, equipment from 1E/4E Gamma World, and intelligent aliens drawn from the intelligent species of Monster Manual/Fiend Folio/Monster Manual 2.

Towers of Saltgate: city-as-dungeon-crawl supplement in the tradition of City-State of the Invincible Overlord, the Chaosium Thieves' World boxed set, or even modules like "Dwellers of the Forbidden City".

 

Shining Swords: a space opera game in the tradition of Star Wars ("A New Hope" more than any of the other chapters), Traveller, or the Eric John Stark stories of Leigh Brackett, using the rules system found in Flashing Blades, especially including the careers and social climbing adapted to space fantasy; possibly with psionics, but very much not sure about that - even if it does, note that moving things with mind power did not show up at all in that first chapter of Star Wars.

 

Millennium: medieval fantasy, covering 486CE-1487CE, Europe to Persia, Scandinavia to North Africa. Really, a thorough revision and reworking of Fantasy Wargaming by Galloway et al.

 

Alpha Cephei: using the Cepheus Engine SRD to clone the MegaTraveller edition of Traveller, with my own setting centered on Terra.

 

Days of High Adventure: my own D&D, working from the already very stripped-down Swords & Wizardry: White Box, stripping it down to the barest essentials, then building it back up to a more complete rules set focused on long-term campaign play, possibly in combination with Towers of Saltgate, but certainly some sword & sorcery setting; would include faction rules and other GM tools designed to allow players to take full initiative and agency.

 

I really should just pick one at a time, focus on it, and not throw it away when I get frustrated with it… and try to ignore the most frustrating part, publishing and production, until I can actually look for solutions to questions like editing, art, and layout.

Re-Approaching The Middle Sea

A few years ago, I published a few articles on a world I called the Middle Sea World. You can find most or all of the posts at the Middle Sea tag here. Anyway, I sort of let it fall aside as I was doing too much worldbuilding for the original idea, in part because I had no group to play with at the time.

A few days ago, as I picked up my copy of Lords of the Middle Sea (the original inspiration for the map, if not the setting), it occurred to me that the setting of that wargame was pretty interesting in itself. Also, it makes a thematic parallel to the Sundaland setting I mentioned in the last post. Sundaland is set in the distant past, when the sea levels were lower than today, while the Middle Sea is set in the future with sea levels that are much higher.

As a quick aside, Lords of the Middle Sea was inspired by a story titled "The Great Nebraska Sea", the text of which can be found here along with a map that was inspired by the story. Obviously, there are differences between the inspiration and the Chaosium wargame.

Map used in Lords of the Middle Sea

Anyway, in the game there are six factions, four of which are player positions. These are the resurgent Aztec empire of the Nahuas; the remains of Catholic Mexico, pushed further to the North; the horse-riding nomads of Transwyoming stretching from the Pacific Northwest to the peninsula above the Nebraska Sea; the seafaring, warlike petty kingdoms of the Wardoms of Appalach, recently united under a single king; the small (and neutral as regards the players) nation of Centerline from the land formerly in southern Wisconsin up into the former Minnesota; and the great seagoing Arks of the Salvar clans based out of islands that were once San Francisco and the Ouachita Mountains, also neutral in regard to the players. Each faction has a different advantage: the Nahuas have large cities and so can recruit more troops from them, the Transwyoming peoples can maintain larger forces of light cavalry, the Wardoms of Appalach have larger numbers of warships available and more access to large, submerged cities to ransack for lost technology if they can hire the Salvar Arks, and Mexico—holding onto the remains of North America's helium reserves—has not only the only source for building dirigible airships, but also the single largest source of victory points at the very start of the game.

Each of the player factions also has a King, who can travel either with a small military retinue of around 600 elite soldiers or incognito. Each has its benefits and hazards, and the King can change from one to the other in various circumstances. As Kings gain experience by performing quests, winning battles, and so forth, they can "level up" to become a Hero-King or even a Sorcerer-King. Hero-Kings may choose one special ability from a list, while Sorcerer-Kings can use any ability on the list—but only one per turn. Quests can also lead to lost Libraries, which give special benefits to the faction that possesses one. Similarly, salvaging lost technology provides benefits ranging from permanent increases to all of a faction's combat statistics through an increase in the faction's treasury and other bonuses.

A really rough version of the map of the Middle Sea
world—notice the difference

For me, I don't much like the Nebraska Sea part of the setting. There is the wonderful image of the Godwall, a thousand-foot cliff along the coast where the land collapsed to create the sea, but it's not enough to save the idea for me. I like the simple plains sloping gently up out of the Middle Sea toward the Rockies. It gives me the option to place more factions/kingdoms too.

I can combine this with some of the deindustrialized future ideas I have, too. Drawing on the concept from GURPS After the End where higher technology exists but is increasingly more expensive, while a Renaissance level of tech is more easily sustainable, that lets me include even more exotic ideas like enormously expensive alcohol-fueled aircraft—maybe biplanes!—mounting machine guns fighting helium-filled dirigibles carrying smoothbore guns and sailing ships armed with anti-air black powder rockets. Characters will probably carry flintlock or matchlock guns, with swords as sidearms to meet opponents who survive the gun volley, though some might spring for the expense of a black powder caplock revolver instead, or perhaps even take on the continuing expense of cartridge ammunition.

Some More Campaigns

In the last post, I mentioned six campaigns that I offered to my players that I wanted to run, and let them choose from among them. I mentioned elsewhere that I have a lot more where that came from, and I had whittled my various games down to just that half-dozen. Here are some more where those came from:

First, I have always wanted to run a game using Ken Hite's "Seas of Dread, Sails of Daring" setting that he outlined in the old GURPS 3E supplement, GURPS Horror, Third Edition, then revised (as just "Seas of Dread") for GURPS 4E in GURPS Horror, Fourth Edition. It might even supersede wanting to run Flashing Blades as a pirate game right now. Also, I'd kind of like to run Stonehell Dungeon in my Middle Sea setting using Delving Deeper, Swords & Wizardry Core, the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, or AD&D 1E with some of my own customized character classes. In addition, I wouldn't mind running a sandbox of Hârnmaster starting in Kanday in Hârn. Aside from these four examples of other people's campaigns/settings, though, I have some others.

• AD&D 1E: Flanaess Sector - I still have considerable work that I'd need to do, but in addition to the idea of using White Star, as mentioned previously, I wouldn't mind converting AD&D for the purpose.
• XXXXX: Metahumans Insurgent - This could be run using almost any superhero game. My preferences would be, in order, GURPS 4E, CORPS, Guardians, or Villains & Vigilantes. The idea is that the world woke up one day a month or two ago and a portion of the population had metahuman powers. The players would be in the upper tier, the portion that counts one in a million as members (500 points in GURPS, 200AP/200SP in CORPS, and standard starting characters in the other games). There would be a lower tier, one in a hundred thousand, that have lesser abilities, and the rest of the population have no metahuman abilities. The campaign would start with the world coming to realize that metahumans exist, and then trace the resulting collapse of society into chiefdoms ruled by metahumans and groups of metahumans. Or maybe some other outcome, depending on how things went. It would be inspired by the TV series Heroes, the movies Push, Chronicle, Jumper, Limitless, Lucy, and the like, and the comic book series ESPers. That is, no costumes, no silly names.
• RuneQuest 3 or 6: Time of the Gods - This is a relatively undeveloped setting in my head, of a world in the late bronze or early iron age where city-states legitimize their rule by invoking gods into physical form as their rulers, or are held in control by powerful sorcerers. This would draw on an article by Jenell Jaquays published in Dragon magazine under a different name, titled "When Gods Walk the Earth", in issue 144. I could probably also do this setting in GURPS with a very small amount of work, or maybe using Hârnmaster with a bit more work.
• Fantasy Wargaming: The Crusaders - Mainly, this would be a way to both show off and develop the FW game system. The game would be centered on a group of characters who have gone to join in the Third Crusade behind Richard the Lionheart. It would need at least six players, though, and a couple of the characters would be pre-gens.
• Realms of the Unknown: Tribes of the Volyet - This would use the maps of my Middle Sea setting, though not the "things I know" about that setting. In this campaign, the Long Sea (not the Middle Sea, which is to the east of that map) is renamed as the Volyet, with the players controlling clans on the eastern shore of the Volyet Sea. I have some events in mind, obviously, but the first part of the campaign would be the players getting used to the system and dealing with each other and some of the NPC clans in the region.
• CORPS: Deindustrial Future Dark - This would be the more realistic version of my Deindustrial Future setting. In this one, magic and such is scaled way the heck back, to the point that they are hardly discernible in the setting. No super gunslingers, no spirits, no alchemical potions. At least, not in the same sense as the GURPS version I am running now. I could also run this with GURPS, but I like to find reasons to use CORPS.
• Top Secret: Cyberpunk Shadows - Near-future using the Top Secret rules. There are some basic spaceflight rules in Dragon magazine, along with an article on lasers in Top Secret, and it's not really all that difficult to come up with stats and rules for other futuristic technologies. I haven't really thought through what I'd actually do with it yet, but it's an idea that keeps pushing itself on me.
• Chivalry & Sorcery 2E: Denizens of the Pale - Another one that mostly exists to showcase a rules set, and also the historical setting, this campaign would have the players as Anglo-Norman settlers in the Pale in Ireland in the early 13th century. They would have to live with the surrounding Irish people, as conquerors or neighbors.

There you go, an even dozen other campaigns that I have desires for in my head, bringing the total I've written down here to eighteen. This is what happens when you don't game for too long. Or when I don't, anyway. Maybe some of them will inspire you to come up with something, or maybe I can figure out ways to run one or more of them. Realms of the Unknown, for example, is particularly suited to Play By (E-)Mail formats.

And, you know, I have still more campaigns in my head. If there's interest, maybe I'll write down some more.

Expanding On My Fantasy Heartbreaker Ideas

Image originally from Big Fish Games

A little while ago, I posted on the various gaming projects I have going. I haven't really gotten anywhere on any of them for various reasons, mostly having to do with work and other obligations. I did make a comment elsewhere which caused me to think about expanding my thoughts on one of them, though.

Whoops. Wrong "Heartbreaker".

One of the projects I mentioned was "MOHb", my very own roleplaying Fantasy Heartbreaker (loosely interpreted). That is a game that would incorporate the things that I like from various other games into one, hopefully cohesive, whole. It's that qualifier to be "cohesive" that is the important element. It wouldn't be hard to just slap together the various systems in which I'm interested and jury-rig the game at the table, but to make them work together smoothly would be a work of design. It's that design work, in fact, that keeps me from just slapping together something, putting a cover on it, and selling it at Lulu.com. I have (perhaps too much, considering how difficult it's been for me to publish any gaming materials other than this blog) some pride of craftsmanship that keeps me from doing it half-assed like that.

So, I figure that, for now, I can just discuss where I see that project going. I'll describe the systems that interest me and why, give an overview of some of my initial thoughts, and throw it all out so that you readers can see something of how I think about gaming. It's not really a work of staggering genius - I am, after all, just thinking of ways to tie together the disparate designs of others in pursuit of an experience that I think I'd like.

The comment that got me thinking about that today, was in a YouTube comment thread (now incorporated into Google+) on a video that rehashes the old "D&D combat isn't realistic because armor shouldn't make you harder to hit" chestnut. I started out by giving the normal rebuttal "D&D combat is abstracted in these particular ways", and a couple comments later noted what I'd like to see in a roleplaying game's combat system: "I'd like a combat system that incorporates the detail and tactical choices of GURPS (including some of the high-detail options like 'The Last Gasp', which regulate the pacing of combat in an emergent way), the naturalistic scales of Swordbearer, and the descriptive wound system of Hârnmaster."

This is your last warning.

What I'll do is go through a notional outline of my ideal game and describe what I'd like to do. WARNING: LOTS OF VERY GEEKY, NECKBEARD, GROGNARD, WHATEVER-YOU-WANT-TO-CALL-IT DISCUSSION FOLLOWS. Also, since it runs long, you get a cut-tag.

Aliens In Spectacular Science Stories - The Koni

Not quite right. They should both be lops.
Plus, more rayguns.

As a sort of preview of the way I am going about this, I have been giving some excerpts from the manuscript in progress. Last time was the Haashek, who are pretty much Lizard Men. This time, I introduce the Koni, but I'll only give the specifics of one of the three possible Koni character classes. The other two, the Koni Seer and the Koni Tinker, are going to be specialized versions of the human classes of Psychic Warrior and Scientist, respectively.



Koni

A more typical Koni example.

Koni are small beings, around half the height of a human, and weigh around 12kg on average. They are covered in short, usually brown fur and have long ears that hang on either side of their head. They look rather like a cross between a rabbit and a teddy bear. Koni prefer to live in underground warrens, surrounded by others of their kind, and enjoy eating, sitting in the sun, studying in their study, and producing offspring. They are not, typically, very adventurous, but some few get the urge to travel to distant places, though always with the intention of returning home with stories to tell to the next generations. These special Koni choose between three classes, the Koni Adventurer, the Koni Seer, or the Koni Tinker. Because of their unassuming natures, Koni require unusual amounts of Experience Points to rise above 4th level, no matter which class they choose.

Koni Adventurer Advancement Table

Level	Exp. Points	Hit Dice (d6)	Saving Throw	Defense Bonus
1	0	1	14	+2
2	2,000	2	13	+3
3	4,000	3	12	+3
4	8,000	4	11	+4
5	110,000	5	10	+4
6	220,000	6	9	+4
7	330,000	7	8	+5
8	440,000	8	7	+5
9	550,000	9	6	+6
10	1,100,000	10	5	+6

To rise to levels higher than 10, the Koni Adventurer must accumulate Experience Points equal to double those of the previous level. Therefore, 11th level requires 2,200,000 Experience Points, 12th requires 4,400,000, and so on.

Koni Adventurer Class Abilities

Prime Requisite: A Koni Adventurer may choose whether to use Strength or Dexterity as their Prime Requisite, but the player must choose one or the other on creating the character, and may not change it thereafter. A Prime Requisite of 15+ gives a +5% bonus to earned Experience Points while a Prime Requisite of 6 or lower incurs a penalty of -5% to Experience Points gained, as normal.

Small Size: Because of their size, Koni have a higher Defense Bonus than human Adventurers do. However, they lose all of it if they wear most types of armor, as normal.

Deadly Accuracy: Koni have an almost preternatural ability to hit their targets with ranged weapons. They gain a +2 bonus to hit with any missile or beam weapon. This includes artillery.

Near Invisibility: If they don’t want to be seen or heard, it is very difficult to find Koni. In any non-combat situation, a Koni can move in such a way that they can’t be seen if there is any cover at all, even shadowy areas, and their silent movement is the stuff of spacers’ wonder-stories.

Saving Throw: Koni Adventurers gain a +2 bonus to saving throws against death and poison, and also a +4 bonus to saving throws against psychic abilities.

Establish Warren: At any time after reaching 4th level, a Koni Adventurer can establish a Warren if they choose. Usually, this will be in a pleasant dale, a beautiful river valley, or among pastoral hills. Once established, other Koni will come to settle the Warren.

Obviously, the Koni are very much inspired by the halflings of Swords & Wizardry, but as usual I am trying to eliminate artificial level caps in exchange for procedural, practical limits. The idea for how to increase the class above fourth level came from Brave Halfling Publishing's The Halfling Adventurer. The original idea for Koni came from several sources, notably the Bunrabs of Swordbearer and the whole setup of Bunnies & Burrows, but also the GURPS adaptation of that last.

Spectacular Science Stories and Psychic Powers (and Tales of the Space Princess)

I finally got hold of John Stater's Tales of the Space Princess (not to be confused with James "Grim" Desborough's Machinations of the Space Princess, which is a very different game), and I love it! I especially love it because it's very similar to what I've been trying to do with Spectacular Science Stories. Oops. Still, there are differences in our respective approaches, so I'll keep going. I want to write a more complete review of Stater's game, but I need to do some research first, so it will wait. In fact, I want to talk about many of the other games that cover similar territory, from TSR's High Adventure Cliffhangers: Buck Rogers to Warriors of the Red Planet. Maybe even the FGU Flash Gordon game if I can manage to afford a copy.

Instead, right now I want to talk about Psychic Powers and the Psychic Warriors of Spectacular Science Stories. My initial brief for them was "like a cross between Jedi and Lensmen, by way of Blue Öyster Cult", and I didn't have much more than that to go on at first. I've been playing with different ways to represent their psychic powers in the game, initially looking at a variation of the D&D Vancian system (discarded as not really good at representing either Jedi or Lensmen), then thinking about ways to adapt the WEG Star Wars RPG approach to the Force (also discarded as it would push the class far too close to Jedi for my liking). Finally, I decided to examine what makes Lensmen different than Jedi, and to consider what it was about "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" that I could import to make a real difference in the class.

Not wanting to abandon the Jedi connection entirely, I looked at the WotC Star Wars method of handling the Force, too. Most of it was either too complex, too tied in with "Feats", or too close to the WEG version to be useful to me. I did like the idea of using hit points to power the abilities, though, as that helps to emphasize the fact that hit points aren't physical damage, plus it gives a potentially interesting tactical puzzle to the Psychic Warriors - spend hit points for powers or save them to soak damage?

The main thing about the Lensmen is that their powers don't really have much of an effect on the physical universe directly. Their real strength is in their ability to affect the minds of others and to sense things at a distance. On the other hand, I didn't want to completely discard the Jedi ability to manipulate things at a distance, though I also didn't want Psychic Warriors floating space fighters around by wiggling their fingers.

What I think I am going to do is divide abilities into Power Groups, like Telepathy, Psychic Combat, Self-Control, and so on. Each Power Group will have five levels of ability, each with one power. At each character level, the Psychic Warrior's player gains two levels to distribute among the Power Groups as he wishes. I currently have six Power Groups (Healing, Probability Manipulation, Psychic Combat, Remote Sensing, Self-Control, and Telepathy), so it would take a character being at 15th level to have all of the abilities at their full capability. Since that would require 20,480,000 experience points, that is a long way off for most characters! Plus, I do plan to come up with other Power Groups (and let my playtesters come up with some if they want), as well as providing loose guidelines for Referees to develop their own. Psychic Warriors do not become a master of every psychic ability there is.

Here are my current notes for Psychic Powers. Note that most of them are not defined enough to even have a cost yet. Also, the Healing abilities will only be usable on others, never on the Psychic Warrior using them (except for "Transcend Death", which can only be used on the Psychic Warrior using it).

Healing

1. Soothing Touch (heal 1d6+1)
2. Cure Disease
3. Healing Hands (heal 3d6+3)
4. Neutralize Poison
5. Transcend Death (become an astral being)

Probability Manipulation

1. Lucky Break (reroll one die roll)
2. Gremlins (machine malfunctions)
3. Serendipity (useful coincidence)
4. Probability Control (specify one die roll)
5. Telekinesis (move object up to 10', cost: 1 per pound or fraction)

Psychic Combat

1. Mind Block (counter most mind-affecting psychic powers with a save)
2. Distraction (minor hallucination distracts target)
3. Psychic Whip (1d6 damage, can't wound/kill)
4. Invisibility (become unobtrusive)
5. Neural Overload (save or fall unconscious 1d6 turns)

Remote Sensing

1. Danger Sense ("I have a bad feeling about this.")
2. Sense (get a general description of a remote location "A room containing four dogs", "An open plain with a tree, and no animals or men present", and so on)
3. Clairvoyance (perception as if at a remote location)
4. Psychometry (detect history of an object)
5. Precognition (general sense of future events)

Self-Control

1. Ignore Pain
2. Rapid Recovery (recover from wounds faster)
3. Resist Heat/Cold (save for half damage)
4. Strength/Endurance (feats of strength, increased damage, and so on)
5. Regeneration (regrow limbs, super-fast recovery from wounds, etc)

Telepathy

1. Empathy (detect emotional state of a target)
2. Read Thoughts (detect surface thoughts of a target)
3. Send Thoughts (transmit thoughts to a target)
4. Suggestion (Jedi mind tricks)
5. Mind Control (direct control of actions, edit memories, etc)

Keep in mind that I am also going to be disconnecting hit points from injury. Basically, while you have hit points you aren't injured, but when you run out and get hit you roll on an injury table. Note that the Healing Power Group doesn't actually allow you to heal physical injuries! This is deliberate. I am thinking about the idea of Advanced Powers, which require two Power Groups at high ability to be able to choose them, and which give one powerful ability instead of improving any of the Power Groups.

I'm still thinking of ways to play up the "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" angle. Maybe introduce a streamlined Sanity system from Call of Cthulhu? I dunno. Maybe the Mind Control ability is enough, since it will allow editing of a target's memories.

Aliens In Spectacular Science Stories/Rockets & Rayguns

Yeah, I am still thinking about which name to use. I think that, at least, SSS will be the working title.

Anyway, aliens. Since the game draws on a wide range of sources for its inspiration (I'll do an "Appendix N" post soon), it also draws on a wide array of types of alien races. On the one hand, humanoids, even ones that can intermarry with Humans, should be really common. On the other hand, some of the aliens in the source material get really weird and "out there". A really common trope is the alien race that is a lot like our stories of spirits and demons, being non-physical and capable of manipulating the physical universe in various ways. The original Star Trek series was particularly good for providing visual examples of these, but they were common throughout the history of the pulp raygun fantasy stories.

I'd talked earlier about the idea of the Flanaess Sector, but that was originally targeted at a more "hard" SF setting, where what we know of physics was important. That isn't a concern in raygun fantasy, so I've been looking at other monsters to include as aliens. I probably still won't include elves, since that would make things look a little too much like 40K for comfort!

I'm particularly interested in some of the more obscure entries to be found in the OSR, actually. The Kzaddich and Tsalakian (pdf), originally found in Footprints magazine (and John Turcotte's dreams prior to that), were put into the OGL when they were added to the Swords & Wizardry Monster Book. I think that they would be perfect for raygun fantasy. In the Adventures Dark & Deep Bestiary, Joseph Bloch provides an interesting creature called the "Genius Loci", which resembles a number of creatures from the original Star Trek, from various adventures of Northwest Smith, and so on. Mr. Bloch helpfully included that entry under the OGL.

I mentioned a number of creatures that fit in the Flanaess Sector article, such as the Flumph, Grell, Otyugh (or Neo-Otyugh), Myconids, Ropers, and so on. I think that I can replace the Mind Flayers with the Thelidu (they fit into the idea of raygun fantasy a little better anyway, since they were specifically developed for a science-fantasy influenced setting, Dwimmermount), which were included in the Swords & Wizardry Monster Book by James Maliszewski. The Umber Hulks who attend on Neogi could be replaced by Joseph Bloch's Underground Goliath.

All of that aside, it should be pointed out that nearly anything that fits into a fantasy world will also fit into raygun fantasy worlds. Notably, some of the horrors in Rafael Chandler's Teratic Tome are extremely appropriate to the sorts of pulp SF that falls into the raygun fantasy category.

I should write a manifesto, of sorts, of raygun fantasy.

The main thing that I'll need to do is work out which aliens are most common and have star empires of their own. I already know that I want the Thelidu to have one, with a sector of Ropers resisting them, and I certainly want an empire of Myconids (or maybe Skathros's Mushroom-men).

In the end, though, all of that is pretty much background to the central theme of the game, which I will talk about next time.

Edit 4/26: I didn't get around to talking about that central theme in the next post, but I will. I started to approach the discussion a couple of posts later, when I began to lay out what, exactly, I mean when I say "raygun fantasy".

Aliens In Spectacular Science Stories - The Haashek

As I work on the options available to players, one area that requires a bit of work is the selection of aliens that the players may choose to play. Some are more involved than others, of course, but a number of the options I have been considering require only a single alternate class. For instance, the Haashek (or Gorrans, I still haven't decided) have only a single class option, similar to the Human class of Adventurer. It is called, predictably, the Haashek Adventurer, and the class is based on the Swords & Wizardry monster stats for the Lizardman. I'll give the writeup as it currently exists, and then discuss some of the features.

                                                             

Haashek

Haashek are reptilian humanoids whose civilization is centered around the abundant wetlands of their homeworld. They are very pragmatic, perhaps even cold and calculating by Human standards.

Haashek Adventurer Advancement Table

Level	Exp. Points	Hit Dice (d6)	Saving Throw	Defense Bonus
1	0	2+2	17	+4
2	2,000	3+1	16	+4
3	4,000	4+1	15	+4
4	8,000	5+1	14	+5
5	16,000	6+1	13	+5
6	32,000	7+1	12	+5
7	64,000	8+1	11	+6
8	128,000	9+1	10	+6
9	256,000	10+1	9	+6
10	512,000	11+1	8	+7

Haashek Adventurer Class Abilities

The Class Abilities of Haashek Adventurers are exactly the same as those of a Human Adventurer, except that the Haashek Adventurer may not choose a category of Weapon Specialization and the Haashek Adventurer has the following Class Abilities additionally:

Natural Armor: Because some of the Haashek Adventurer’s Defense Bonus comes from the alien’s natural armor, they retain a +4 bonus to Armor Class even while wearing other armor. As usual, though, the extra bonus for higher level goes away when armor is worn.

Breath Holding: A Haashek Adventurer, like all of the race, can hold its breath for a very long time in comparison to Humans. If the specific amount of time becomes important, count it as 10 rounds (of 10 seconds each) for each point of the Haashek Adventurer’s Constitution score. This gives a range of from 5 to 30 minutes before the Haashek has to take a breath.

Movement: Haashek are fairly ungainly and slow-moving on land, but swim quickly. On land, a Haashek Adventurer has a movement rating of 6, but they swim at a movement rating of 12.

Claws: Haashek Adventurers take no penalty for attacking unarmed, due to their sharp teeth and claws.

                                                             

In many ways, this class is much like the Human Adventurer, as it notes. There is an additional 1+1 Hit Die at all levels, and the progression of the Defense Bonus is significantly different (Defense Bonus is a special bonus to Armor Class given to a character who is not wearing armor; this is to encourage genre conventions, and I took the idea from the WotC Star Wars RPG). On the other hand, the Haashek Saving Throw (single saving throw system) is significantly worse than the Human one, which starts at 14. Since I plan to use the Saving Throw as the basis of any technical skills like piloting spaceships and so forth, the Haashek is at a significant disadvantage in any situation other than combat, but in combat they are definitely superior in most ways (though the Human advantage of being able to choose a category of weapons with which they gain a +1 bonus to hit, and if hand-to-hand weapons a +1 bonus to damage, is pretty helpful too). The experience chart for the Haashek Adventurer is worse than the standard Human Adventurer, too, starting at 2000 xp for 2nd level, where the Human achieves 2nd level at 1500 xp. All classes in the game double the required xp at each level increase, with no level limit other than that geometric progression. The Haashek also gains a few minor benefits based on the monster writeup in Swords & Wizardry, mainly movement and breath holding, but also the natural weapons and armor.

I'm still not sure what the Haashek/Gorrans should look like. The picture above is one way to take it, but I'll probably leave it up to the artist I choose to illustrate them when I get to that point. Maybe they look more like Sleestak, or Gorns, or whatever.

Other aliens may have multiple class choices. For instance, the Koni ("coney", get it? I kill myself) will be able to choose from Adventurer, Seer, and Tinker in my current thinking. These classes somewhat parallel the Human options of Adventurer, Psychic Warrior, and Scientist, but will be somewhat different to adapt the specific details of the Koni race of course, such as generally reduced Hit Dice, sneakiness/unobtrusiveness, and so on. Mostly, I am thinking of ways to adapt some of the types from Bunnies & Burrows to that alien race and the needs of a raygun fantasy setting.

One other thing: I am thinking about changing the name of the game to Rockets & Rayguns, to keep the assonances of Dungeons & Dragons. Do you think that's too much? Is Spectacular Science Stories a better title?

Flanaess Sector

One of the campaigns that runs around in my head, that I'd like to run or better still play in, is what I tentatively call "Flanaess Sector". This is AD&D as a science fiction/science fantasy setting, though running it as a nearly hard-SF game (as "hard" as Traveller, say) could be very interesting indeed. Psionics and the Psionicist replace magic, technology is used instead of magic items, and the alien races are drawn from the more outré AD&D monsters. What it would need is a collection of new character classes, new technological items, starship rules, and perhaps trade and commerce rules (to handle Traveller style merchant campaigns, which are wonderfully flexible).

The aliens are mainly what I've given my thought to, little though it has been so far. I imagine an empire of Illithids, Ropers (which I imagine as being the first race that the Illithids were parasitic upon, drawing on the Urophion from The Illithiad) in a small sphere of resistance to the Illithids, Grell (in the Colonial Grell variety from Spelljammer), Neo-Otyugh, Neogi from Spelljammer with their Umber Hulk servants, maybe Xorn treated as a silicon-based life form, Flumphs, Ixitxachitl (suitably modified to not be based around Clerics, though they would make a great evil theocracy), Aboleths, and maybe a few others. I also greatly enjoy the Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000, so maybe those too. I don't have much love for humanoid aliens, but who knows? Maybe there are orcs or tabaxi among the stars.

The character classes might be based on the ones in Stars Without Number or maybe even Starships & Spacemen 2nd Edition, but rewritten to fit better with AD&D rather than B/X. Or, more likely, a set of interesting classes could be written from nearly whole cloth. I envision, in addition to the Psionicist I mentioned, Soldier, Pilot, Engineer (or Technician), maybe Merchant, Conman, and a few others. It being AD&D, there would be room for quite a few character class options. The classes in the old WotC Star Wars game might not be a bad set of choices.

Starships could be handled with any of a variety of systems. The aforementioned Starships & Spacemen and Stars Without Number are the obvious choices, but Terminal Space or some other OD&D-based SF supplement would be workable, as well. For that matter, Traveller's starships would work well, too. As an alternative, perhaps a system of Gates, similar to the ones in the Judges' Guild "Portals" trilogy, could connect the worlds. Perhaps not, though, as starships are half the reason to play SF instead of fantasy.

Here's a list of all the intelligent monsters from AD&D that I think would make good aliens: Aboleths, Beholders (but I don't want to use them, although there is a whole society built around them, especially in Spelljammer), Dopplegangers, Dragons (maybe, but if so, then especially the Blue or Black varieties), Flumphs, Formians (centaur-ants), Galeb Duhr (maybe, they're perhaps a little "magicky"), Grell (Colonial), Intellect Devourers, Ixitxachitl, Lizard Men, Mind Flayers, Myconids (there's also an ecology of mobile fungi for their homeworld, not to mention the special molds and slimes could be from their native environment, too), Neo-Otyughs, Ropers, Thri-kreen (mantis warriors), Treants (should they keep their ability to animate trees? I don't know; probably not, which is also a way to "fix" Galeb Duhr), Umber Hulks, and Xorn. Mi-go (if the DM has the first print Deities and Demigods) would fit perfectly into the setting.

As I said, I would prefer not using any humanoids (other than Lizard Men, Dopplegangers, and Myconids, perhaps), but if I did I would stick to the less common ones like Crabmen, Aarakocra (bird-men), Tabaxi (cat-men), Banderlogs, Grippli, and the like. Xill could be interesting, though they should probably have their ethereal powers and nature removed.

It might be interesting to include a "transcended" species that manifests as the faery creatures like Sprites, Pixies, and the like (there's a useful "ruling caste" for them to be found in Adventures Dark and Deep called Faeries). There's a race like that in the Star Fleet Universe, in the Omega Octant, called the Loriyill. Their starships have semi-magical effects like space fireballs and such.

Anyway, it seems like it could be a lot of fun, and leveraging the more science fiction/science fantasy elements of D&D seems like a good idea to me.

More Musings On Preferences

Earlier, I discussed what I like and dislike about D&D and closely related games. I offered some possible solutions, largely drawing on Fantasy Wargaming, to the problems that I have with the game, which is almost by definition the designing of a fantasy heartbreaker. This time, I will consider one of the first divergent variants of D&D, RuneQuest (I am not considering Tunnels & Trolls in the main because I have almost zero experience with that game, it being one of the very few early adventure games that I have not played much at all).

RuneQuest began, in part, as the Perrin Conventions for D&D combat (should that link go away, the Conventions are also available as part of All The World's Monsters Vol. 2 and as a .doc file here). This was a rules variant which provided a little less abstraction to combat, introducing ideas that would also be modified and incorporated into AD&D (segments, for instance, seem to develop from the "Melee Time" tracking system of the Perrin Conventions) as well as the rudiments of the RuneQuest combat system. RQ also attempted to alleviate the reliance on character classes, providing a new system, "skills", to allow one character to be mechanically differentiated from another. Skills in RQ were defined by their function and their skill level. Uniquely, RQ skills were rated by their percent chance of success (though in the first two editions, they might as well have been rated on a d20-scale, as all skill ratings were in 5% increments; as the basic game system has grown over time, some versions have indeed chosen to use d20s directly, such as Pendragon) rather than by an abstract level. RQ also introduced a magic system that was closely tied into the default game world presented in the rules, which allowed any character to learn some magic, but reserved the most powerful sorts of magic for characters who wanted to spend a lot of time and character resources on that pursuit. The combat system was further modified, as I said, to reduce the abstraction by introducing hit locations and limiting hit points severely, removing many of the functions of hit points in D&D to skills such as Parry and Dodge. Armor was changed so that it no longer provided an abstract protective value, but actually reduced the amount of damage that a successful, undefended strike would do to the character. Finally, the experience and improvement system for characters was tied to the use of skills in the adventure, so that a player would choose the direction of character advancement by the choices made in play, rather than by selecting a character class.

Those are some significant changes, but like D&D they are pretty straightforward and based in play at the table. Later games (GURPS, I am looking at you) would start more strictly with design, rather than being largely developed in play, and there are benefits and drawbacks to that approach. I will note that RQ does begin with such design considerations, but they seem to be developed from systems that were applied at the table and then refined.

Whatever, the point is that RQ offers a set of solutions to perceived problems in D&D, making it in many ways a fantasy heartbreaker in the classic mold. I like many of the solutions that RQ makes to D&D questions, but I dislike others. Skills, while a wonderful concept in theory, become, in practice, a bit unwieldy. They slow down character creation by forcing too many choices, extending the process of equipment buying (always the slowest part of character creation - which, by the way, is something that needs to be solved) to the character's abilities and, worse, doing so at a stage when the character should probably be just sketched out anyway. This may be less of a problem for generic NPCs, as their skills may be given default values based on the type of encounter, but that does require many more (or much longer) entries in the "monster book" portion of the game, as creatures vary by a lot more than just hit dice. I've already discussed other solutions to the problem of character abilities in my earlier discussion of D&D, so I'll leave that off now.

Combat, on the other hand… wow. What a revelation the RQ system was back when I first saw it. Even more because when I was younger I never really understood hit points and the abstractions of D&D-style combat. RQ's combat has the disadvantage over standard D&D style combat in that it is more involved and takes more time (what can be resolved in two rolls in D&D takes at least a full four in RQ, and there are more decisions for players to make which also add time). That said, I think that those tradeoffs are very much worth what they add to the game. Interestingly, the writers of Fantasy Wargaming seem to have looked at RQ at least in passing, as they apparently try to address the problem of multiplying dice rolls by combining the "to hit" and "hit location" rolls into one. Unfortunately, FW's method of calculating the column to use on their tables works against this. Speaking generally, I think that my ideal fantasy heartbreaker would draw its combat system from the Perrin Conventions and RQ to some degree or another.

Magic and religion in RuneQuest was similarly a revelation. It is one of a very few magic systems that I feel approaches the feel of what real-world people think that they are doing with magic and spirituality, to some extent. By giving most people access to minor magical abilities (increasing the damage their weapon does by a point or two, improving other characteristics by a point or two, minor healing, and the like), giving the option for more expansive magical abilities to specialists (a lightning strike or a burning ray of light from the heavens! breathing underwater! flight! and so forth), and tying access to these magical abilities to the religious sects to which the character can belong (which provide guidelines for behavior through emulation of the sect's ideals - a far better choice than the abstract "alignments" of D&D), RQ solves several D&D problems nicely. That said, there are other solutions to the magic and religion questions that I am interested in - again, I point to Fantasy Wargaming, which gives some excellent solutions to the matter of polytheistic religion that are not well covered by RQ's method, and which may be better than RQ at handling monotheistic religion as well. The other major magic/religion system that I want to consider (and will do so in more detail in due course) is the one currently called, clumsily, "Path/Book Magic" for GURPS 4E, which was previously called "Spirit Magic" in GURPS 3E and was introduced in C.J. Carella's GURPS Voodoo: The Shadow War. Finally, I've been researching the claims of medieval and renaissance magicians to see what sort of abilities would be best to include in a fantasy game (not specifically for this project, but the information is definitely of value here). There's a surprisingly wide variety of effects to consider, many of which are valuable for an adventure game.

So, to summarize, there's a lot to love about RuneQuest, but the breadth and ubiquity of the skill list is too fiddly for a really robust game of the sort that I might find to be ideal. I'd previously suggested a middle ground that might work better, which retains levels for players who are not interested in messing with skills, and skill specialties for those who are.