Read All The Things #5 - Cowbow Ninja Viking

One can likely tell from the title that this book is fun.  Our protagonist, the cowboy ninja viking, has a very severe case of multiple personalities.  Our 'hero' faces many challenges being a triplet, and the subject of military experimentation to create a better warrior.  He reunites with some other triplets, his ex, some antagonists and some allies.  This graphic novel is packed with crazy...

Cowboy Ninja Viking gets 8 strips of bacon on the scale.

Which brings us to the triplet subrace.  DNA and Interzone would likely experiment in this type of field, likely at the cost of the subject's sanity.

Triplet (Subrace) - World of Damnation

-The victim's warrior, mage and priest sources are not restricted by level type.  A triplet can choose a warrior, mage or priest source instead of the level type.  The victim's cyber source is unaffected.  (The victim may have three warrior sources for example.)

Restricted - Human only.

Madness - +2 madness points.

Codex Psychosia - Rubies of Vitae

To set them well, to right old ways,

To seek the well, to bring new ways.

Rubies fall from knuckles

Flayed with holy gold.

The noblewoman's path leads

From the soiled bilge waters

Pooling at her bedsheets

Poisoning her blossoms.

Rubies flayed from knuckles

Fall from holy gold.

The Eye of Ra has never seen

The path of crushed bone,

Which lead to Anubis' garden

Where grow nothing but stone.

Rubies fall from knuckles

Flayed by holy gold.

A setting, a chalice, defaced

By unrelenting Mahees

With unliving chaperones

Here meets the Neverplace.

Rubies flayed from knuckles

Fall from holy gold.

Magus Guard

Magus Guard

Magus Guard are mages that have spent years studying the principles of combat. They are not warriors, but mages who have sacrificed arcane studies for martial ones. Because of this the practical application of the skills they study are beyond their grasp, and therefore they cannot apply more than the basics of any martial art in combat. They manipulate the arcane energies around them to increase their combat prowess or decrease that of their opponents to compensate for this shortcoming. Unlike Warlocks/Battle Magi, the Magus Guard are usually among those leading the charge in to combat. They are the adrenaline junkies/berserkers of the mages. Typically the best of the Magus Guard are used by the largest mage schools. Often they are left to protect the secrets hidden within their libraries or as assassins; their abilities making them equal to any normal warrior in battle.

Using Mana:

Used to augment/hinder combat abilities or weapon stats

    Modifier to Hit (+1/1)

    Increase unsoakable (+1*/2)

    Additional parry (1 parry/2)

Must choose a weapon specialization at creation from any specified Standard Weapon Use

    For an additional +5 XP at level up, new weapon specializations can be learned, victim must have the relevant Standard Weapon Use.

Banned from cybernetics, master, sensei and martial arts.

Max pool expenditure is based off applicable the specified standard weapon use of the weapon being used, this weapon use counts as a sage lore.

 

Adapted by Brin Shadius.

Tsukino Con 2013

 Yeah, that's right, I went to an anime convention.  This year I only went for the Sunday due to real-life restrictions but it was completely worth it.  Other than the bag of swag from the vendors, it was mainly about well-dressed people.

 I did manage to sit in on two really good rpg panels.  The first was focused on GM tactics and equally informative as it was funny.  There were some really good ideas that came up, like adjusting things in the room to give the players associative senses.  Lighting and music are the easy ones, but bringing smells into the game can be a very powerful SL tool.  There was also some talk about "what to do about players" which always brings specific players to mind.

 The second panel was about inprov skills meeting the rpg world.  Improv actors are natural-born role-players and have some skills that gamers don't think of.  The "yes, and" game is the best example.  If a character decides to derail the plot, as a character you take it up and add something of your own.  Now there are two of you doing stuff, and more openings.  If you are the SL, you can take this new direction and use it to enforce the plot.  (Oh, you guys are going home instead of stopping the orc horde?  Fine, you see your town, burned down by an orc horde!)

 Next year I am planning for the three-day-tour....

Until next round.

GottaCon 2013 - In The City

 GottaCon has come and gone, and it was a good one.  This year I brought some nWo along with me, a storyline I named In The City, and registered three spots.  Part I was at 9am Saturday (Morning Coffee), and Part II was at midnight until 9am (Day Jobs).  Things started well enough, and like any classic nWo game, it grew into a monster.  Luckily, I am a professional monster-handler.

Morning Coffee had 7-8 players, only two of them new to the game.  Once the celestial monkey threw a table at them things went along their natural course. There was epic fails and backstabbing.  The two new guys were awesome, easily fitting into their victim's roles and learning to use power.

Day Jobs started with 16 players, we were short premade victims and had to make some on the fly.  Everyone was tired, throats were sore and the energy drinks had stopped working.  In true nWo form, we pressed onward.  Our new players slid into their new roles heavily and security guards died.  At 4am the second slot began, many of the new players left (which I fully understand) and we picked up another new player.  By 8am they had found the genetics library.

Overall I will call it a success, but only with thanks to the crew who kept it alive.  There were a few things I learned this year:

-Pre-written intros are awesome! (but at a Con each intro needs a setting description as the new players in the later session didn't really know where they were)

-Make more starter victims.  Lots of them.

-PLAYERS HAVE TO SIGN UP!!!  otherwise you will might not get a seat (I will never run that big of a game myself again. Ever.)

-Bring the Atlas and Grimiore.  Pictures say a thousand words, your throat will thank you.

And yes, I do plan on having nWo at next year's GottaCon, I will continue In The City, possibly with a second SL at my side.....

Until next round.

Read All The Things 4 - The Jesus Incident

Ship.

Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom tell the story of Ship and its Shipmen.  Ship has only one demand: that the Shipmen learn how to WorShip.

Perhaps I'm going a bit fast, lets start at the beginning.  A voidship, Earthling, is built on the moon and loaded with clones and launched to find a habitable planet and colonize.  Earthling is a supercomputer, and after centuries of traversing the void and finding no compatible planets, becomes sentient with the aid of the scientist-crew.  Eventually it begins to think it is a god.  Earthling becomes Ship, an omnipotent technological being.

Ship travels for aeons, rescuing humans from Earth (or possibly Earths) and finds Pandora.  Pandora is a planet mostly covered by man-eating monsters, water and sentient kelp.  Ship wakes up one of the scientists from its apotheosis and informs him that Ship will terminate the human race unless they learn how to WorShip.  That is when human nature takes over and the story begins.

The Jesus Incident is an awesome novel.  It is cerebral and intriguing with a fair share of violence and high-tech.  One the scale, this book receives nine strips of bacon and a small cheese platter.

There are a couple of campain ideas in there, like colonization or a revolt within one.  The megalomania of an artificial intelligence can be based upon Ship, in transit or colonizing, and would make a most challenging opponent.  Also, the cloning practices (and results) of Lab One are interesting (starting level mutation points with an equal amount of flaws).  The 'kelp is too vast for rules or guidelines, but the hybrids would get a few bonuses (knowledge points, telepathy and telekinesis, negative Stm).

Read All The Things #3 - Armada

RATT#3 is about Robots!  Transformers: Armada has a ton of robots, big ones and little ones, and they all transform (of course).  The omnibus contains issues 1-18, with storylines by Chris Sarracini and Simon Furman and some awe-inspiring artists.  Armada is not from the standard/G-1 universe, and the bot-designs are more modern and dynamic with a slight manga feel.  For all its differences, Armada still feels like a solid and complete setting.

The first storyline is about the minicons, small transformers the size of people (but they live on Cybertron).  Megatron figures out how to weaponize the little guys and begins to build a collection.  The obvious intent is to destroy the Autobots and rule the galaxy, he is Megatron after all.

Then Galvatron shows up, with his sweeps, straight out of another universe with Unicron on his heels.  Seems the big planetbot is galaxy jumping, eating all the Earths and Cybertrons.  Then we get to watch Megatron fight Galvatron.  Epic.

Armada has robots, lots of smashing, great storyline, and amazing art in full-colour.  On the Bacon Scale, Armada receives 7 generous strips of bacon.

Until next round...

Read All The Things #2: The Red Duke

The Bacon Scale is back, this time with a Black Library tale.  The Red Duke, by C.L. Werner, is set in Bretonnia with all the fluffy ribbons and dirty peasantry that entails.  The stories revolve around the Duke (a vampire if you hadn't guessed yet) in both his pasts and present, with the narrative jumping back and forth with few reference points.

This might sound confusing, and it should.

 

The Red Duke is quite insane you see, having been locked in a tomb for 500 years after being defeated in battle, and his mind keeps falling back into his memories.  It all makes you pity the necromancer, the only living servant, who has to deal with a hallucinating vampire. 

There's a lot of knightly stuff, being set in Bretonnia, and peasant oppressing.  And a decent feud...

Overall, The Red Duke gets 6 strips of bacon and some cheese (cheddar).

Until next round...

Read All The Things #1 - Akira 1

I would like to introduce a new element to this blog, which I admit is a long time coming; reviews of the books I read.  nWo is often influenced by a good book, and I might add some of those thoughts in here too.  At the end will be a rating scale, based on increments of bacon.  Ok, on with it....

I would like to present: Akira, vol 1 - Tesuo, by Katshiro Otomo.

This is the beginning of the much-famed Akira series.  I've seen the movie, multiple times, but that was a few years ago so I'm almost reading it fresh.  The first volume introduces Tetsuo, Kaneda and Kei.  After an encounter with a weird 'kid' Tetsuo gets head-explody and takes over the biker/clown-gang.  Hell breaks loose, and there's a fair bit of bloodshed and sewer-crawling.

Neo-Tokyo has some strong influence on the World of Damnation, specifically the City of Tokyo and its biker gangs.  The Olympic site is interesting, but due to the time-frame difference (Neo-Tokyo is during War/early Ice), it would be like a dungeon-crawl to get to that depth.

On the scale, Akira vol 1 gets 8 strips of bacon (out of ten).  Until next round.

MADNESS!!!

Madness

When a victim is confronted by something which does not comply to rational thought they are touched by madness. The decent into insanity can be gradual or swift, or it may be forced upon by spells and curses.

Madness Rating (MR)

Places and entities that are naturally dementing have a Madness Rating (MR). A negative App would apply towards the MR (-2 App would add +2 to the entity's MR), and being immortal also adds +1 MR.

Sanity vs Madness

A madness war is provoked the first time the victim encounters any of the following:

-Something with a MR.

-An immortal being (if mortal).

-Going below -10 wounds.

-Something with a negative App.

-Inter-dominion travel.

-Entering Quiddity, Heaven or Hell.

A madness war is based on the victim's Int. Add one for each sage lore the victim has points in. If the victim has any Madness Points, subtract them from the total. This is the victim's Sanity total.

Int +#SL -Mad +d10 =Sanity

Madness Points

Madness is aquired when a victim fails to resist a madness war. The victim recieves one Madness for every five points they did not resist. Use Madness as a modifier to the victim's MS and against K.O.

Insanity

Once a victim has Madness they will begin to exhibit signs of instability. Whenever a victim with Madness rolls a natural one to attack, or a natural ten on a check, they must roll Insanity in addition to any other effects. The victim rolls one dice and adds any Madness points, then consultes the chart below. Effects will last for an amount of rounds equal to victim's Madness.

Roll Effect Modifiers

1-9 Stable (everything is fine, for now) None

10-14 Paranoid (They are watching) -5 to soak

15-19 Hallucinations (not again...) -5 Per

20-24 The Shakes (twitching fear) -5 Dex, Str

25-29 Visions (it's happening again!) -5 Dex, Man

30-34 Mania (can't take it anymore...) Attacks closest

target.

35-39 Portents (They are speaking to me) +5 to dodge and

MS.

40-44 Neurotic (gibbering looney) +5 auto blast pool

to hit.

45-49 Permament Condition Roll again, effect is

pernament.

Multiple Insanity

If a victim is under the influence of an Insanity, they add +5 to the Insanity roll for each effect.

Ѝ All victims in the Nightlands begin with one Madness.

The next post will be about racial mods and sources dealing with madness....MADNESS!!!!