AW style movies - Roguish Edition

Pick a Pocket (d20+Subterfuge+Dex)
14-: major failure, pick two results (see below)
15-19: minor failure, pick one result (see below)
20+: success!

Results:

• You fail to pick the target's pocket
• Somebody (50% chance it's the target, otherwise somebody nearby) notices you. If this result is picked twice, everybody nearby is aware of what you did.

Pick a Lock Under Pressure (d20+Subterfuge+Mind)
Performing this move requires a set of thieves' tools.
14-: pick one
15-19: pick two
20+: pick three

• You open the lock
• You don't break any of your tools
• You aren't noisy in the process
• You don't take very long
  

Sneak Past Some Guards (d20+Subterfuge+Dex or Mind)
In some cases, the GM may require a distraction before you have a chance to use this move.
14-: pick one
15-19: pick two
20+: pick three

• You get where you want to go.
• You don't spend much timing waiting for an opportunity/to realize it's not going to work.
  
• The guards don't notice you.
  

Trade on the Black Market (d20+Subterfuge+Mind)
14-: pick three
15-19: pick two
20+: pick one

• The price involved is unreasonable (and not in your favor).
  
• Getting the deal done takes a heap more time than you intended.
  
• You get mixed up in trouble in the local underworld.
• The suspicions of the local law enforcement are aroused.
  

Colony Five

Inspired by this post on RPGnet, but taken as an excuse to approach scifi with the sort of trope-filling gonzo-ness I like in my fantasy worlds.

The Elevator Pitch:
"Stargate Atlantis meets Farscape meets Red Dwarf meets Firefly. With just a hint of Star Wars and Indiana Jones"

The Full Details:
In the last years of the 21st century, Earth took its first steps into the galaxy, by sending out several sleeper ships to set up new colonies on habitable exoplanets. Some were sent by national governments, some were privately funded by eccentric trillionairs. The fifth ship was a cooperative effort by several nations working in tandem. Sadly, Sleeper Five ceased sending back telemetry a few years after it departed, and was presumed lost. History moved on.

Over the centuries that followed, humanity discovered faster than light travel, and the galaxy ws fully unlocked. The sleeper ships were actually overtaken by FTL vessels, although Sleeper Five was never found. Earth's nations explored the stars, exporting their hostilities to a grander scale, and roping in the technologically primitive aliens they found. Wars between opposing empires caused untold damage, but in the wake of these atrocities, in the new peace that followed, humanity found the utopia they'd sought for so long.

The Earth Empire, the first truly unified nation encompassing all humanity (and, to a lesser extent, the aliens) was set up, aided by the Great AI, a computer intelligence that encompassed the Empire's communication network, and was a part of every device in the Empire. A golden age flowered, with humanity wanting for less and less as the Great AI took over more and more responsibilities. Eventually, humanity as a whole was sitting in the lap of luxury, the Great AI tending to their every whim, responsible for all production and innovation, creating technological marvels that seem almost magical by today's standards.

Which was brilliant, up till the day the AI just... stopped. Nobody knows why. But little of the Empire's technology would run without it, and almost nobody remained who knew how to repair or operate anything. Within a year, 90% of humanity was dead, primarily from starvation.

Five hundred years later, the galaxy is just starting to rebuild, in places. The New Earth Empire, founded by a few worlds that were not hit as hard in the great crash, aims to bring back the glory days, although their methods are far from peaceful, and their technology, while on average better than that of most worlds, is nowhere near the heights of the Old Empire. The Fringe Worlds, sandwiched between the N.E.E. and an assortment of other stellar nations of varying viciousness, and the Wastelands that used to be the core of the Old Empire, are potentially in for a rough time.

And then Sleeper Five comes back, appearing out of an inexplicable aurora of light and peculiar sensor readings above a backwater fringe world. The inhabitants, a simple farming community, a couple of rogue archaeologists, and the independent trading ship that occasionally drops in to buy vegetables, are quite surprised, but not half as surprised as the crew of Sleeper Five.

The campaign revolves around the adventures of the Sleeper Five colonists, their farming friends, and the random interstellar hangers-on who've twigged that these people are the Next Big Thing, as they set up their colony, explore the ruins of the Old Empire, salvage bits of malfunctioning post-singularity technology, and fend off the depredations of various unpleasant people, aliens, robots, and other, stranger things.

[m20 magic item] Bottled Lightning

A post inspired by the above picture, the awesome lightning pirates in Stardust, and the fact that "mana potions" are boring.

Lightning is power. In a magic-rich environment, this is true in more ways than one (that one otherwise being "the power to fry anything stupid enough to be standing out in the open"). The wizards of the Coin long ago worked out that properly captured and processed, lightning could be used as a power source for their spell-workings. Most wizard towers have a lightning-rod and processing equipment installed, although unless the resident feels like messing with the local weather patterns or annoying a god, there's always the problem of getting a regular supply (compounded by the fact it goes flat after a while). Many wizards prefer to just buy it from the few skyship crews who specialize in lightning collection.

A bottle of reasonably fresh, refined, lightning costs about 350-400gp. It can be used in one of two ways:

Firstly, a wizard (or cleric) can drink it as a standard action. If he then casts a spell on his next turn, that spell's HP cost is reduced by 1d6. If the caster doesn't cast a spell on his text turn, however, the build-up of power discharges, dealing him 1d6 damage.

Second, it can be shaken and thrown, causing it to explosively discharge. This deals 3d6 damage to the target, and 1d6 damage to anybody standing next to him (Reflex save for half. DC = thrower's attack roll).

Stale, old, bottled lighting would use a d4 or d3 instead of a d6.

eXPloration: the pictorial guide (part 2)

I'd just like to thank every artist who's fantastic work I've ripped off for this.

You also get 2 xp for visiting each of these locations...

The Pyrsburg, realm of mages and merchants, hub of trade (if you can read French, just ignore the text)

Al-Harraj, city of a thousand genies
Spinotaur City, center of learning in Zwuyala
The great city of the drow that nobody can pronounce the name of.
Cannon Valley, the ancient stronghold of the dwarves
Broken Glade, the elven retreat on Spindlewick
The very Edge of the World (although you have to look over it to get the XP)

I couldn't find a picture of Yendys, as nobody has ever felt inclined to draw Sydney as a fantasy city. I guess I'll just have to do it myself...

Also, Xp will be given for...

Getting ship-wrecked (unless you did it intentionally) - 1 xp
Watching a city burn (once per city) - 2 xp
Watching a dragon fly - 1xp
Flying on a dragon - 5xp (less for later dragon flights and other forms of aerial transport)

And that, for the moment, concludes the pictorial guide to eXPloration in Jarrah's campaign.

eXPloration: the pictorial guide (part 1)

really, as an artist, I should be doing these drawings myself, but instead I've just stolen them wholesale from around the internet. So, without further ado, some inspirational artwork to represent the various things you can earn exploration XP for in my campaign:


Gazing upon the Coin from one of it's three moons - 20xp

Climbing the Spindle, the mountain at the center of the world, home to the gods - 15xp
Visiting the secret grove of the high druids, or the hidden monastery of the Tax monks - 8xp

Cross the Spindlewick mountains, or the Great Howling Desert of Aratha - 5xp

To be continued...

Cubic Dungeon

So, here's an idea that came from me messing about with Dyson Logos' dungeon Geomorphs, and the nifty random dungeon generator made from them.

I give you, the cubic dungeon:


Of course, to any hapless adventurers transported inside it (whether by a goblin doorway, or an angered sorcerer, or something else entirely) it does not at first appear to be a cube. From inside, it's a normal dungeon, until you discover that walking in one direction long enough will bring you back to your starting point, as will taking three right (or left) turns in the right location.

The party mapper will be tearing his hair out.


Above is the 6 geomorphs I pasted together. I took the liberty of tweaking the left "arm" design slightly so as to avoid having dead ends. Also note that while there are several secret doors in the complex, there is only one truly secret room. Perhaps that holds the key to escaping?

Left 1d4 Dead

I love the zombie apocalypse survival horror computer game Left 4 Dead. Which is a bit weird, considering zombies as a whole scare the snot out of me, and I avoid horror movies like the plague.

But Left 4 Dead has such awesome gameplay. Particularly the way it forces the players to work together and help each other out. For those who don't know, in Left 4 Dead, various things can incapacitate you: being mobbed by normal infected, the special attacks of most of the special infected, falling off a ledge, that sort of thing. The only way to cease being incapacitated is for one of your teammates to help you up, or do some similar action. Actually dying in L4D takes, well, a lot of effort, but can happen if the party is stupid and doesn't help each other out.

I love this feature. So, here's a suggestion for how to incorporate it into D&D, or some other game that uses hit points (ans assuming HP represent, in part, luck and ability to dodge, not just structural integrity):

When a character is down to 0 hp, he is incapcitated, and can't do anything. Additionally, he must make a save (vs. Death Ray, or DC 20 Fortitude, or whatever fits the edition) or suffer an ongoing detrimental condition (-2 on all rolls, or perhaps a Negative Level), until the character can rest and get some decent medical attention (takes at least 2 hours and a DC 20 Heal/Treat Injury check, or a Heal spell. Cure spells won't cut it). The effects stack if the character is incapacitated multiple times. Optionally, the third time the effect is applied, the character dies.

If another character gives the incapacitated character a hand up (an attack action), the incapacitated character regains half his lost hit points, although any ongoing conditions remain. Characters cannot be given a hand up in this way until they have been down to 0 hp.

This means that a party can work without a dedicated healer character, but benefits from having one, as the healer can help stave off incapacitation, and thus saves to avoid bad effects, and can help reverse those effects when they occur. Meanwhile, non-dedicated healers will have to, occasionally, help their fellows out.

Similar systems could be applied to paralysis, hypnotism, being chucked off ledges, and suchlike, making each easily fixed by a fellow party member, but forcing a save against some on-going detrimental effect.