Welcome back to Featured Artist! This time I have an artist who is making a name for himself doing custom characters sheets. That is not all he does, but these are so much fun I had to share.
Today is a big day in astrophysics. The first-ever image of a black hole has been released.
The black hole is 500 million trillion km away, or 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 km or 52,850,042 Light Years.
When that light left the black hole's event horizon the Earth looked like this:
Just some perspective, plus I love those maps.
Much like magic, black holes have "suffered" due to the expansion of science. What do I mean by that?
For much of the 20th Century, the black hole of science fiction was monstrous, mysterious, even evil thing. A star that ate everything that came to close including light and time. It's not hard to see why there were some sci-fi authors who categorized them as monsters.
In fact, this one is a monster. It is 40 billion km across and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. For reference, the Earth has a diameter of 12,756 km and the Sun has a diameter of 1.392 million km. That dwarfs the Sun more than our sun dwarfs the Earth.
In fiction black holes lead to other universes, often evil ones. Or sending people to different parts of the universe in defiance of any laws of relativity. Indeed they were the ultimate "MacGuffin" to break all sorts of laws of reality.
BlackStar, as a game concept, really owes a lot to these older ideas of black holes in more than just name.
In truth, the ideas for BlackStar got their very first start for me in the 1979 Disney movie The Black Hole. I remember seeing this at the 67 Drive-In in my old home town. The movie is full of ideas that characterize what I want BlackStar to do and be even before I add the Lovecraftian bits. We have a crew exploring space. There is a psychic crew member. We have an evil mad scientist in his old castle spaceship surrounded by mindless servants and evil strongman; it's practically gothic horror. Even the tag line is horror, "A Journey That Begins Where Everything Ends".
Another black hole sci-fi/horror movie that was a big, if not one of the biggest, influence on BlackStar is 1997's Event Horizon.
In Event Horizon, we have a black hole, in this case, an artificially created one (like what we see in the Romulan Warbirds) that power the ship. The mystery, and horror, of the Event Horizon, is where was the ship the entire time it's been missing. We learn that the black hole has taken the crew into a hellscape not dissimilar to what we saw at the end of The Black Hole. Claire Weir's, Dr. Weir's (Sam Neill) dead wife, tells us "I have such wondrous things to show you" brings to mind Pinhead's "We have such sights to show you" from the Hellraiser movies. Indeed they can be assumed to be the same sights.
In both cases breaking the laws of physics, in both cases trying to move faster than light, opens you up to the consequences of breaking the Laws of Creation. The black hole becomes the proverbial gate to Hell. Abandon all Hope Ye Who Enter Here.
This is made even more explicit in the Doctor Who episodes "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" from 2006. In this, the scientific portrayal of black holes is contrasted with the classic sci-fi portrayals. In Doctor Who black holes are a means of travel. Gallifrey and every TARDIS is powered by "The Eye of Harmony" a captured black hole created by the Timelord Stellar Engineer Omega. It has as much horror as the engine in a Tesla sedan. Neat yes, but not horrible.
The Satan Pit turns this on its head. Here the black hole "just eats" according to the Doctor. The black hole is The Pit, the jail that the devil can't escape from. It is the Christian Hell or the Abyss.
Consequently, the episodes have been compared to "Event Horizon" and "Alien" by critics.
So that leaves me at today. What can black holes do to inspire horror?
Much like "anti-matter" gave way to "dark matter" in the minds of the creatives, black holes have been largerly replaced by "Wormholes". But even a wormhole is still sci-fi shorthand for "short cuts in FTL travel". Sure they can be like "gates" but the fear is diluted.
I think where I am going to go with all of this is take a page from Event Horizon and make the drive of the new Mystic class ships be the problem. They were designed to move faster than light, the heralded Warp-13 drives, but the real purpose is to open rifts in space-time to allow these horrors to come through. Both sci-fi horrors and cosmic horrors.
Black Holes, like the God of the Gaps, has had its mystical notions removed for the more appropriate scientific ones. As someone that originally studied to be an astrophysicist, this is a great thing. But as someone who loves horror and sci-fi adventure, I feel like I have lost something.
Maybe Dark Matter and Dark Energy can be my new mysterious thing! In any case it needs to be frightening. They say "in space, no one can hear you scream", but I also want "in space, no one wants to hear you yawn".
And this song was on my mind while working on this post.
My design principles start with "Is it fun?" and end with "Is it fun to write?"
I mean sure there are some subversive messages explicitly about Colonialism (and in particular about the British Empire in India) in Ghosts of Albion. But the message is not one of action it is more directed to people who already understand what a bad thing it can be.
So yeah. I guess the scope of my writing is just not that large.
Bloat Games has been putting out some quality games for a little bit now and they are certainly the new "It" company in the Old-School scene right now. Their newest Kickstarter is now up, The Blackest of Deaths - A Dire Old School Fantasy RPG and I have been given access to the "Ashcan" copy of the rules. Let's have a look and see what this Kickstarter is all about!
The Rules
We are greeted on the very first page with a "Caution" and "YOUR CHARACTERS WILL DIE." I think that sets the tone for the game quite well. The aesthetic reminds me of Dungeon Crawl Classics mixed with HackMaster to be honest. Not my usual vibe, but I like what I am reading so far.
My favorite is the line "yes, this is the type of game your grandparent’s preachers warned them about in the 70s & 80s!" Ok then!
We start out with what are the two big "rules" of the game;
1. "Rulings vs Rules", there is no rule for everything in that can happen in the game. The GM is in charge and will make up what they need to make up to keep the game going.
2. The Core Mechanic. Roll a d20 and d6 at the same time. If the d6 comes up 1 you get a Hinderance. If it comes up as a 6 then you get a Benefit. 2, 3, 4, or 5 are ignored. There are also Advantage and Disadvantage rules.
The character Attributes are the same, but instead of a range of 3-18 you just have your pluses or minuses. Max is 3, the lowest is -2. You start with 10 hp +/- your Con score. The only way to get more is via magic! There is no leveling up! This is you.
To offset this all characters have some Luck points.
Armor and Dex scores don't add to "AC" but reduce damage given.
There are four races, elf, dwarf, goblin and human. Races can raise or lower your scores.
There are six classes, Assassin, Barbarian, Monster Slayer, Necromancer, Ranger, and Street Rat.
They work as you expect, each one with a specialized purpose. Monster Slayer has a unique talent for killing a particular monster you choose for example.
There are a limited number of spells (no levels) and most deal with combat.
Equipment and weapons finish off the Player's Section.
The GM's section is the other half of the book.
We go over the basic rules again and discuss some difficulty checks. This is where the game's "New School" roots show from under their "Old School" dye job! But in truth, it all works great.
There is a good sized monster section with the monsters in a very distilled format. Just the essentials.
All the favorites are here and it is easy to see why and how these monsters will mow through most characters.
There is also a good-sized section on treasure and magic items.
The game is fast to pick up and lethal. It is close to an OSR "Beer and Pretzel" game to be honest. Great for a single night or weekend or even as a side-quest with a "Magnificent Seven" style adventure.
As of this writing, the game is funded (in the first 2 hours!) and they are at the first stretch goal of 20 more monsters. There are plenty more where that came from too.
Really looking forward to seeing what this game does.
Day 9: How Do Your Games Distribute Power Among the Players?
Well, I would have to say I try to focus on mechanical balance as much as I can within the scope of the rules.
Some games, say for example many old-school games, balance is not really a consideration. But you also don't play those games for balance, you play them for the game-play-experience you get (not XP in this sense).
So I create witch classes that are, for the most part, pretty weak at love levels. This in on purpose since it fits in with the design constraints of the games I am working with. The payoff is once you get to higher levels you are pretty damn powerful. Like scary powerful really.
In other games, I also look a lot into the balance of the character types. For example in Ghosts of Albion Tamara and William, the "stars" of the show are also some of the weaker characters power wise. They are not the great powerful warrior Queen like Boadicea or the magic using vampire or the poet whose words can shape reality. This balanced with their ability to affect the plots and course of the game via their greater Drama points.
After that, it becomes the realm of the individual game masters to do their job.
At the top of my list, I will say is Jason Vey. We worked on Buffy together and a bunch of other projects.
We agree on all the "big stuff" and respect each other's backgrounds and areas of expertise. But we are also not afraid to go at it when defending something we both want.
A collaborator should bring out the best in you and you for them.
I also would not hesitate for a chance to work with Christopher Golden and Amber Benson again like we did on Ghosts of Albion.
