Season of the Witch: Episode 5

Episode 5: Veteran of the Psychic Wars

Fall 2004
Texas.

The girls are driving from NOLA and end up in Southern Texas. They get a phone call from Faith (much to their surprise). She mentions she talked to Dawn and heard they were “in the neighborhood” and gave them directions to where she and a friend was. The go to the place Faith tells them about (a little out of their way) and the meet Faith (remember, this is AU Faith, the Faith of this world died in prison when the Knights of Eolhim attacked her) they also meet an older man, Nigel. Nigel recognizes Tara, whom he accidentally calls “Megan”. Bob recognizes him and Nigel can see Bob.

Nigel and Faith are here hunting Bigfoots. Bob does not trust Nigel and indeed, Nigel seem more interested in Willow and especially Tara than he does in Bigfoot hunting.

Faith is excited to see old friends and to be out of the demon hunting biz. She claims that she was approached by Nigel last year and he works for “The Hoffman Institute”. Bob knows the organization, a group of cryptid hunters.

Slowly it is revealed, mostly from Nigel himself that, that there is more history between Nigel, Bob and Megan than Bob has let on. During an argument between Bob and Nigel, Nigel reveals that he had slept with Megan (something Bob knew) and that the timing was right that Tara might his daughter and not Bob’s. This fun filled family moment is broken up by an attack on their camp by Bigfoot.

The creature is driven off and the cast discover that Nigel hunting Bigfoots is actually a ruse. Even Faith was fooled. Nigel is still working for S.A.V.E. and they are interested in Willow and Tara. In fact they have a rather large file on them and even know that Tara had died and her “sister” Kara never existed. Everyone is angry. But Nigel points out that while his methods were bad, he is really the good guy, he even asks Bob to vouch for him and his mission. S.A.V.E. also knows about The Awakening and wants to make sure that whatever happens that the population of normal humans are safe.

Though now they have a giant cryptid on their hands and Tara’s empathy tells them that the creature is afraid and being hunted by other hunters. The Cast decides to forget Nigel for a bit and instead focus on the Bigfoot. They find it with hunters on its heels. Willow and Tara cast a masking spell on it so it can get back to its home in the swamps unnoticed.

Nigel apologizes for his ruse and says the offer to join S.A.V.E. will always be open to them. He ask Faith to go with him to the Pacific Northwest where he has been told some strange occurrences are going on. She agrees and they all part.

Tara tells Bob that it doesn’t matter what Nigel told her, her father was the man that sat by her bed when she was sick and the one that taught her to ride a horse and drove her all her equestrian events. Packing up, they drive to Central Texas to get back onto course.

NOTES: Not everything in an adventure works. This one is a good example. I had higher hopes for this one. I had been reading a bunch of “Conspiracy” games at this point (DarkMatter, ConX, Delta Green) and I wanted to pull in material from all of them. I was also playtesting the new version of Chill. Well things just never clicked. I tried to merge various elements of all these games (the Hoffman Institute was from DarkMatter) but the problem was not the contradictions but the similarities. While I had not quite given up at this point, this did lay the seeds for me that WitchCraft/Buffy is fairly incompatible with Conspiracy X or DarkMatter.

I brought back S.A.V.E. since I was playtesting Chill 3.0 at the time, which led to my Chill conversions, and I even detail some of the information that Nigel claimed S.A.V.E. had on Willow & Tara.

Of course S.A.V.E. is the third “big org” interested in the girls and The Awakening (The Witches Committee and Lilith). S.A.V.E. is pretty upfront about what they want; to protect normal humans with Willow and Tara’s help. We still have one more big organization to go.

Cordy is missing here. Not for any plot based reason other then her player was not here. So I claimed she had other charges to deal with, after all she was only their “probationary” Whitelighter.
The adventure itself comes off as a weak monster of the week episode and even the monster, Bigfoot no less, is less than threat and more of an annoyance. This partially because at this point in the game it is becoming obvious that your garden variety monster is no match to the cast and my Bigfoot was nowhere near anything like a threat to this group.

I brought Faith back and totally underused her, meant to bring her back again, but could never find anything that I wanted to do that would do her justice. More daddy issues, this time it is Tara that has to show her support and love for Bob. Nigel really is not her father, but he did sleep with Megan. But to be fair she was still suffering from the after affects of dealing with demonic possession. Nigel had been tracking Willow and Tara all this time. He was using Faith as his way in with them.

Bigfoot was originally going to be a chupacabra, but I had watched this Bigfoot documentary a while back and they were hunting the Skunk Ape in Texas, so I figured I would go with that. The research I did then helped in the formulation of some my ideas for the Ghosts of Albion adventure “Almasti”.

One thing I established right away in this adventure was that Bigfoot is NOT a demon. Too many things are labeled “demon” in the original series; it was dull and unimaginative. Bigfoot is a bigfoot. Here are the stats for our guest star. He is a young (say adolescent) Bigfoot and not quite up to his full stats yet.

Bigfoot (young) Motivation: To live alone
Creature Type: Hominid
Life Points: 38
Drama Points: 0–1

Attributes
Str: 7
Dex: 5
Con: 7
Int: 2
Per: 6
Will: 3

Ability Scores
Muscle: 20
Combat: 22
Brains: 10

Maneuvers
Name Score Damage Notes
Grapple 24 — Resisted by dodge
Punch 22 19 Bash
Spear 22 26 Slash/stab

Next up. The Ghosts of Alamo.

How I stat out characters

I post a lot of characters here.  Lots.

Usually I have something in mind or I want to try out a new system with something I already know or a combination of the two.  But how do I take a character like Zatanna, or Red Sonja, or Willow and Tara or anyone and figure out how they are supposed to "be" in a particular system.  I have a couple of things I like to do and it has usually worked pretty well for me.

I always start out with what the character can do and who is this character supposed to be in my mind.  If I am working on Dirty Nel then I have a good idea, "sassy street faerie prostitute. cute. smarter than anyone gives her credit for. Enjoys her creature comforts and knows how to get them."  Some of that doesn't translate into game stats. Well...most games anyway. But a lot of it does.  I know she has quite a bit of knowledge about the world, street life and the occult.  I know she has a bit of magic in her and I also have a good idea about what her fighting prowess is like.

Skills
In most systems there are skills.  I look for signature skills the character has, say being able to program computers or speaking 4 languages and figure out how these are represented in the system.   For someone like Willow I look for high numbers in computers, science but also occult knowledge.  I know this is going to suck up most of her points and want to get them figured out first.  Plus they are very iconic to the character.  If I am working on Batwoman then I want to be sure her acrobatics are good, if I have Robin Sena I know she is young and most of her skills are weak except for things like occult knowledge and maybe her languages.

I like to stay within the rules as much as I can.  This helps me define the character in terms of that world's reality. If a Unisystem character gets 25 points for skills then I need to have good reasons for going to 35.  If I am using PL 9 as a base for Tarot and PL 11 for Tara in Mutants and Masterminds then I want their skills to comparable to those realities.

Skills are good Rosetta Stone really.  Most systems have them and there are lot of good translations.  Knowledge (Supernatural) could be the same thing as Occultism or Occult Knowledge.

Magic
Since I tend to make a lot of magic using characters using magic as another yardstick is good.   For D&D and d20-like games I know they need a certain spell and they need to be a certain level to cast that.  That is how I came up with Willow and Tara's levels in d20 Mod, a combination of spells and skills.
In a game like Ghosts of Albion the same is true, but then I can decide on how many levels of magic they might need.
For something like d20, this is pretty easy to work backwards from.  Find the spells, find the levels that can cast those spells, fill in the details.
For a point buy system like Ghosts, it is only part of the equation.

Combat
A lot of games feature combat or fighting.  To ignore this does the character an injustice.  Even in Call of Cthulhu or Doctor Who the character might need to stop running or talking and fight it out.  Thinking about combat like a skill then is a good way to figure out a character.  In M&M I know Tarot for example is a better fighter than Willow or Zatanna, but she can't match either of them (or even come close) in magic.  That doesn't mean she can go toe to toe with the likes of Red Sonja either.  It means that there is a good balance to be had.  Where that balance is sometimes is up for debate.  My Red Sonja may be different that someone else's based on the same PL (to use an Mutants and Masterminds example).

Feel
This is less "quantitative" really.  I'll start with a premise, "Willow is the most powerful witch in my game" then I work down from her.  I think what would it take to get the character to this level, what would it take to get a different character to a similar level.
For characters like the Hex Girls I want to make them total novices at magic.  So in Unisystem they have Magic 1 or 2 tops.  But still give the points where they would be better than average, music and showmanship.   I usually feel pretty confident in my builds, but each one usually takes longer than say just stating up John or Jane Doe Character.

Sometimes I have such strong idea for a character concept, like Justice, that I also just like to see the character in different systems too.  In the case of Willow and Tara I am also seeing if I can stat them up in as many systems as I can.

Horror is a matter of tone

Quick question.  Which movie is scarier, The Shining or Mary Poppins?
Have an answer?
Are you sure?

Watch these movie trailers then and come back.  You may already seen these.

Shining
Mary Poppins

Horror games are like that.

There is a theory out there on the net (I think I first read it at Krell Laboratories)  that if you take the final girl of horror films and turn her into an ass kicking male then you have an action film. The converse is also true.  Take an ass kicking hero and depower him, or put him is a situation he can't control then you have the start of horror.

The recent trend in books has been the Modern/Urban Fantasy.  You take the tropes of horror and make them into a fantasy story.  Vampires are not hideous monsters, they are different now. Same with witches, werewolves and all sorts of beings that just a few of decades ago were creatures of horror.  We can't blame the Twilight crowd for this, this dates back to even long before Anne Rice and Lestat.  Dracula, was still a monster, but a sexualized one.  Movie Dracula even more so.

What does this mean for games?

Nearly any game can be horror.

D&D has always had a strong undercurrent of horror. Fantasy and Horror have always shared a link.    So often times you can turn a fantasy game into a horror game with something as subtle as the presentation.

The Ravenloft setting had a great example of this.  In D&D you if you go up against a kobold it is described as a sort of reptilian humanoid.  In a horror game it is some foul combination of human, reptile and dog the size of a child, but with murder in it's eyes and blood on it's lips.

I think it is this tone that attracts me most to horror.  I like the tropes, but take the same tropes and given the hero a lot of guns and well there is the action flick again.  "Underworld" is action adventure, "Silence of the Lambs" is horror.

I try to do this in my games as much as possible, but I try not to over do it.  Even the scariest horrors become yawn worthy after to many repeated occurrences.

Some of my favorite books that helped me the most as a GM and author are Nightmares of Mine, Chill, Vampire the Masquerade (oWoD, for personal horror), and Call of Cthulhu.

D6 or not?

D6 from West End Games has always been one of those systems I have known about, toyed around with but never actually played.

DriveThruRPG has the most recent collection of D6 games for free.
I had Hercules & Xena for a while and still have a copy of DC Universe.

I get the basic system (and even better now after talking to Jason Vey).

Is there anything I am missing by not playing/knowing D6?
Is it a system I should investigate further?

I am not a huge fan of dice pool games and I have enough games to keep me busy for the next 10 years to be honest.

February DriveThru Specials

It's time for some new DrivethruRPG codes!  Just my way of saying thanks for being loyal readers and visitors here.

This code is good until March 8th.
The basic discount code is:

FebChatterTwenty11

It's good for 20% off the following products:

Weird War II Player's Guide [Pinnacle Entertainment]
Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade [Third Eye Games]
The Echoes of Heaven Bestiary/The Tainted Tears (OGL Version) [Final Redoubt Press]
USHER Dossiers (ICONS) [Vigilance Press]
The Floating Vagabond BarFly Bundle [Reality Cheque]

I also have one code for someone to receive all the above products for FREE.

But I don't have a good contest/give away idea in mind.  In fact this post has been sitting my computer all day.

So here is the deal.  In the comments section below please post an idea on how I should give away this code. It can be a trivia contest, or a link sharing idea, something.  Whomever has the best idea wins the free code for all the PDFs above AND that idea will be used next month for the March free code.

So let me know!  I'll let it run for the next couple of days or until I get a winning entry!

Orcs of Mystoerth

I have been wanting to write more on the creatures that inhabit my game-world of Mystoerth.  I thought maybe I'd go with the classic nemesis, the Orc.

I have talked about the Desert Orcs of the Zakhara Desert and their allies the Desert Elves.  I also plan to use Harvard's more bestial Orcs of Blackmoor for my Blackmoor area (north pole).

Sure my Orcs have a lot in common with Tolkien's Orcs, but I also borrow a lot from Shadowrun, Orkworld and other games.  I also like to think of orcs as some sort of human predecessor/off-shot. Almost like the gods were trying to make humans (or maybe the elves were) and the orcs were their disastrous first draft.  That would put more emphasis on the human-orc wars than the orc-elven ones. Unless there are some good reasons for the elves to be involved.

My write-up on Goblins can be read here, in case you were curious.

History of the Orcs

Orcs began as one of the first experiments of creating life by the elves.  It is said that the greatest sin is that of hubris. In this hubris, feeling they were equal to the gods that had made them, the first elves, nearly immortal beings of great power, created the first orc through their magic.  They wished to instill the sturdiness of the dwarves (a race created at the same time as the elves), the tenacity of the goblins and the adaptability of this new race known as human.  Though to their horror what they created were the Orcs; a word that means "horror" in the elf tongue.  The elves did not know what to do with there creations, so they hid them away in dark mountains, and underground and anywhere where the clime was harsh hoping that nature could do what they could not, kill their creations.  But nature didn't instead she took iron of the Orcs and tempered it into steel.  The orcs flourished and when the other races discovered what had been done it was too late to stop the orcs.

The hatred of the orcs and elves comes from this point.  Orcs see elves and are reminded of what they are not, elves see orcs and are reminded of the failures of their own race.  Even if the true knowledge of the elves and orcs has been lost to all but the most learned scholars, the racial memory runs deep.

If orcs just fundamentally hate elves, their hatred of dwarves is more pragmatic.  Dwarves and orcs are often found in the same locales fighting over the same resources.  So far the only race orcs have seen as worth enough to be considered equal foes are humans.

Background

All orcs have a number of qualities in common.  They are typically much stronger than humans and elves, have bestial or "primitive" features.  Orcs will cross-bred with anything, but favor goblins, hobgoblins, humans, and ogres.  Orcs have interbred with trolls and some hill giants in the past which has re introduced some randomness into their genetic makeup.  Though it should be stated that orcs do not prefer this.  Orcs are extremely proud of their heritage and consider themselves to be the best of all species as they are the only species to live in every part of the world.  Though they are dimly aware that their success is due in part of their adaptability and ability to interbred with others.

Orcs give birth to 1-2 young at a time.  The gestation period for an Orc is 4 months.  A feamle orc can produce as many as 4 to 6 young per year, but only half will survive their first year. Orcs grow fast, with babies able to walk within months and eat meats by 1 year old.  Orcs also reach sexual maturity at age 10 and are considered adults soon after.  Female orcs choose mates based on their physical size and their ability to gain meat for the family unit.  Males must show prowess in battle and kill any rivals for the female's attention.   All orcs have a sense of honor, but it only applies to other orcs.  Though they have been known to extend the same code to humans; a race they see as a worthy adversary.

Some orcs do enjoy the taste of human flesh, but they typically only eat human (or demi-human) flesh as a means to strike fear into foes or as part of a shamanistic ritual.  Orcs are omnivores, though most prefer only meat.  Elk, caribou and reindeer are the chief staples of their diet (depending on territory).   No matter what though orcs will not eat the flesh of another orc.  That is one taboo they will not break.

Grey Orcs - these are the common orcs of the "Oerth" part of my world.  These are the brutish, violent orcs of most D&D worlds. They are found through out the Flanaess. These orcs extend far to the north where they are the original stock of the Blackmoor Orcs.  Some scholars believe that these are orcs are the offspring of the Uruks and generations of interbreeding with goblinoids.  These orcs are fond of raiding human villages for food and supplies.  Some of these orcs have skin tone that is almost pinkish in hue, but they are still called Grey orcs.  The largest concentration of Grey orcs are located in the Pomarj region. Here the Empire of Turrosh Mak still reigns as it has since CY 584 (the current CY in my game is CY915).  The line of Turrosh Mak greatly favors the Uruk ancestry found in the Grey Orc line. The current orc emperor is Turrosh Bane XIV who came to power after murdering his father and brothers.  Bane is devious, intelligent and violent in the extreme.

Green Orcs - The common orc of the "Msytara" side of my world. Like the greys these orcs are violent and brutish.  These orcs though also have an bit higher intelligence than their grey cousins and are bit better organized, they constantly fall prey to clan fighting among lesser Green Orc chieftains. Unlike the Greys and the Uruk there is no one leader to try to unite these orcs.   These orcs are common to much of the Empire of Thyatis and can also be found in the deep southern jungles of of Pelatan.  The largest collection of Green orcs can be found in the Broken Lands outside Glantri.

White Orcs - These are green orcs that have adapted to the frozen wastes north of Hyborea and Norwold.
In the Northwest corner of Brun there is Hyborea and here the White Orcs have interbred with the Animalistic Orcs of Blackmoor to produce a breed of orc that is both strong, violent and smart. These orcs though seldom organize enough to become more of a threat outside of a raiding party.  Due to the inherent adaptability of the orcs, these orcs have skin that is bone white.  Better to hide in the frozen wastes they call home.

Blackmoor Orcs - These orcs are much more bestial in appearance and manner.  Their sizes vary considerably and many have pronounced horns, claws, fur and other "animalistic" features. It is believed these orcs have been the results of the the strange experiments that were common to Blackmoor before the great explosion.  These orcs have also interbred so much with goblins and bugbears that within Blackmoor it is nearly impossible to tell the two races apart.

Uruks - Also known as High Orcs or even Black Orcs, these orcs consider themselves to be the pinnacle of the orc race.  Their skin is dark and they stand nearly a head taller than men.  They are thickly muscled, often with pronounced tusks in their lower jaw and they are fiercely intelligent.  While, maybe not more so than humans, but they have a cunning that makes them a horror in battle.  Their mortality rate is very high so that they never produce great numbers.  Their society is ordered, militaristic and violent.  They have a single leader, currently a charismatic chieftain, that can control thousands of these orcs.  If the Uruks ever decide to go to war with humanity then it will be a war that engulfs the world.

Desert Orcs - an off-shoot of the Greens.  They live in a land where they are at peace with the elves.  In fact Desert orcs and desert elves consider each other to be brothers.  This relationship was forged thousands of years ago when the rose up together to fight of the evil of the Necromancer Kings.  Living under the harsh desert sun has turned the orcs complexion to more of a brown color.
More detail has been posted here, Desert Elves and Orcs.

Half-Orcs - Most times when an orc inter-breeds with another species the result is an orc. The orc may have certain qualities that are similar to their non-orc parent (Goblin-Orcs are smaller, Ogre-Orcs are larger).  Though there are often times individuals that seem to posses the better qualities of both parents.  These half-orcs can often find a place for themselves in the human lands or the orcs.  Half-orcs are more common among the Green and Grey orcs, though all orc sub-species have produced a half-orc one time or another.

D&D Fortune Cards for non-4e D&D

So I picked up a couple of packs of D&D fortune cards the other day.

So far I fail to see what the big deal is.  It adds another random element to play that can be fun.  They are really not all that different than say playing with Drama points, except that you don't get choose the effect they have when you use them.

Basically you start with a deck say of 30, 40 or 50 and then you shuffle them and draw a card each round.  You can hold or play your card.  Some have conditions that need to be met (you or an ally make a skill check) or when something happens to you (you are moved or teleported) or in combat.
Some negate some bad effect, other add a +2 to a roll or even say you can have 1/2 damage or extra damage depending on another roll.

So far I have seen a single card that I would say is a balance or game breaker.  There are some that might give a character an undo advantage, but I also see it as a way to help make combats interesting and constantly changing.

I also didn't see a thing in them that screamed "this is for 4e only".  In fact outside of some minor terminology I could see these working in any version of D&D you care to play.  Sure some would need to be tweaked, shifting has a particular meaning in 4e and saving throws mean something different.  But others would be perfectly fine to use in your favorite retro clone.

There have been some images of cards posted by Wizards, so lets look at them.
Here are two.

Get a Grip - Every version of D&D has a Saving Throw.  They might mean something different, but they have them and making them is good, not making them is bad.  If an ally fails their save, then play this card and they get a second chance.  Yeah-yeah you "save or you die" types are squealing, but frankly these cards were never for you to start with.

Grim Determination needs more definition, but not so much if you just say "bloodied mean half your hit points are gone".

While I may never use these cards in my 4e game, I am going to make a point of trying them out in at least one old-school game sometime soon just to see if they work out.