Saturday, May 20, 2023

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 20

 This series of rooms follow after the previous 8. They are modified, but still appear to be barracks or sleeping quarters of some sort.

Room 20

There are 8 (a to h) rooms here. These rooms each have 4 beds. 

20a-d: Empty. Various nicknacks of silver to amount to 6 gp value in each room.
20e: Dead (skeleton) Ophidian
20f: Dead (mummified) Ophidian
20g: Empty, no tresure
20h: Empty, but there is a curious device here. It looks like a metal wand about 10" long. One end is open and a red crystal can be seen inside. There is a small depression near the middle. If press a ray of heat will shoot out causing 1d6+1 damage (Death Ray save for half) to a distance of 50'.

The wand has 1d6+4 charges remaining.

--

The wand is a heat ray, but a weak one. Damage to an Ophidian would only be 1d4+1. 

Friday, May 19, 2023

Kickstart Your Weekend: Flashback to 1983!

We have a bunch of new Kickstarters this week to make you feel like you are back in 1983. So let's get going.

The Mosidian Temple: an OSRIC/1E Adventure

The Mosidian Temple: an OSRIC/1E Adventure

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dlimedia/the-mosidian-temple-an-osric-1e-adventure?ref=theotherside

A chance find by author David Flor and DarkLight Interactive will bring this 40 year old treasure to life.

Already funded, they are now headed into the stretch goals. This one will be an absolute treat to see.

Now I have said you can never have too many Monster books, so here are two more!

Devilry For Old-School Essentials

Devilry For Old-School Essentials

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamersandgrognards/devilry-for-old-school-essentials?ref=theotherside

This is a companion piece to the Demon book they Kickstarted last year.  For OSE, it will give us a bunch of devils. So you know I am already all over it.

Tome of Essential Horrors

Tome of Essential Horrors

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/necromancergames/tome-of-essential-horrors?ref=theotherside

Necromancer Games is back and this time with another update to their Tome of Horrors line. This time for OSE.  I am expecting some overlap with this and the Devilry book above and that is OK in my mind.

I rather liked all the Tome of Horrors books and have them all.

 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 19

 Going back to the central corridor and now taking the middle passageway on the right it leads to a series of rooms.

Room 19

There are 8 (a to h) rooms here. These rooms each have 4 beds. 

Room 19a: Four dead bodies. These bodies are more mummified and can be seen for what they are, snake people.
Room 19b, 19c: Empty
Room 19d: This room is home to an Ophidian Spectre. The Spectre attacks anyone who comes in.
Room 19e, 19f: Empty
Room 19g: Two mummified bodies
Room 19h: Two mummified bodies and 1 Ophidian Zombie. The Zombie attacks.

--

There are no treasures in these rooms. All the items are made of plastic or other synthetic materials.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space from Cubicle 7

 I am now coming up on the next wave of Doctor Who RPGs. All from Cubicle 7

Doctor Who RPGs

While there are technically three RPGs, they are all related.

First is the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. This is the one I have talked about here a lot already.

Second is the new Second Edition of the RPG, now just The Doctor Who Roleplaying Game.

And finally, we have Doctors & Daleks, a game based on the previous two, but using the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons OGC rules.

One thing that strikes me is despite all I have said about this game line over the years I have never really given it a proper full review.  Well I will change that next week.

In the meantime, here are some characters I have stated up for the Doctor Who RPG (1st Edition so far).

I'll spend the rest of May with this system.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 18

 One of the "bed rooms" (Room #17) has a larger open corridor that leads to another similar room. This room however only has one bed in the very center.  

Room 18

Pressing any buttons will cause different colored lights to shine with an accompanying tone. If the characters are within the 10' area (with the central bed in the center) then the following happens:

White - Sanitizing, everything becomes clean, dirt falls to the ground.
Green - Healing, minor wounds are healed for 1d6+1 hp of damage
Red - Warming, gets uncomfortably hot. 
Orange/Yellow - very bright, blinds as per the Light spell.

There are no creatures or treasures here.

--

This a surgery center. The lights are great if you are an Ophidian, not so much for humans.

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Time Lord: Larina & Jenny

The rules for the Time Lord game are lite on character creation, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. The Appendices in the Print and PDF versions give some guidelines but with 7 Doctors, 29 companions and more NPCs, putting together a new character is not very difficult.  Let's see how this game fares in recreating two characters we have already seen; Jenny Everywhere and my witch Larina.

Jenny Everywhere

Again, I am having Jenny stand in for our Time Lord character. The Time Lord RPG is thin on character creation and even thinner on creating new Time Lords and Gallifreyians.  Jenny makes a good stand-in. Again I am making the claim here that this Jenny is Gallifreyian/Human, raised mostly as a human. I am also going to speculate that there are other Gallifreyian/Humans out there, this may explain Henry DeTamble of "The Time Traveler's Wife" (It can't be a coincidence that Henry was born in 1963.)

As always, I must include her license:

"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."

Jenny Everywhere
Jenny Everywhere
JENNY EVERYWHERE

Apparent age: Mid-20s
Species: Gallifreyan/Human
Equipment: Scarf, Cool Goggles, bike messenger bag

Strength: 3, Cheat Death 2, Iron Constitution 2, Regenerative Powers 3
Control: 4, Escapology 1,  Blunt Weapons 2, Brawling 2, Edged Weapons 2, Marksmanship 2, Sleight of Hand 2, Stealth 1
Size: 3
Weight: 3
Move: 3, Running 1
Knowledge: 5, Computing 1, First Aid 1, MacGuffin 2, Pseudoscience 3, Science  3, TARDIS 1,  Temporal Science 2
Determination: 5
Awareness: 4, Bureaucracy 1, Resourceful Pockets 2, Serendipity 1, Striking Appearance 1

Attack: 4, 6, 6, 6, 6
Basic Defense: 3

I am unsure if this is the same Jenny from the FASA game. This one feels a little different, but I can't explain why. I mean they could be different and yet aware of each other all the same. 

Larina "Nix" Nichols

As with the FASA game (and every game I try her out in), I go outside the strict rules for character creation. Based on what I did for the FASA game, this is Larina after she had been in contact with one of the blue crystals from Metebelis 3. This was the start of her adventures. The Larina for the FASA Who game was a Welsh girl. Since this game takes place in 1991, I will use a version of her that I was using in back in the 1990s, an American foreign exchange student living in Scotland at the time. 

Edited to add: OR if this takes place in 1996 this is an older (25 years old) Larina back in the US. In my timeline for her, this would be right after her divorce. 

Larina "Nix" Nichols
Larina "Nix" Nichols
LARINA NICHOLS

Apparent age: Early/Mid-20s
Species: Human
Equipment: Small knife, tarot cards,

Strength: 3, Cheat Death 1, 
Control: 3, Edged Weapons 1, Stealth 2
Size: 3
Weight: 3
Move: 3, Running 1
Knowledge: 4, First Aid 2, History 2, Occultism 4, Science 1
Determination: 5, Independent Spirit 1, Psychic Shield 2, Telekinesis 1, Telepathy 1
Awareness: 4, Striking Appearance 2

Attack: 3, 4
Basic Defense: 3


Ok. I do like these builds much more than I thought I would when I picked this one back up. Jenny is a very flexible character and any differences between this version of her and others is honestly part of her character design. That is, there are supposed to be differences. 

For Larina, well, her job is to stick as close to the Rules-As-Written as I can and yet still get the character I want. My concept of her is a "witch", writ large, and maybe even stereotypically. How can I make that work in a game where so far everything has a scientific explanation.  Though I will point out that this game has an "Occultism" ability and it says this:

Occultism [Knowledge]

A character with Occultism knows about the white and black magic practices of witches, druids and the like. The ability also implies a familiarity with superstitions and old sayings.

So there is a solid hook here, AND I will point out that no other characters (companions, NPCs, or monsters) have this skill on their sheets. 

Time Lord Character Sheets

The real question now becomes, are these two traveling together? I like the idea of the Doctor being involved, particularly Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor.  That is if I go with 1991, when the rules were in print. I could very easily go with 1996, the year that the game was released on the Internet, AND when the Paul McGann Doctor Who movie came out. That is also the same year that "The Craft" came out so using the logic of the TV series, the Eight Doctor is traveling with a young American witch. I don't hate the idea, certainly. 

Yeah...I don't hate this idea at all really. Maybe the bike messenger bag that Jenny has in my build above she gives to the Eighth Doctor for his Big Finish audio dramas. The Eighth Doctor's time is ripe for all sorts of shenanigans to be honest.

I'll have to consider this one more, but I like these builds and would use them to give the Time Lord rules a go. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 17

 Going back and this time taking the far left hallway leads to another corridor and collection of connected rooms.

Room 17

These four rooms are larger than the ones on the far right. There are plenty of flickering lights with writing that doesn't not translate. There are plenty of beds in these rooms. One has a skeleton of the snake people on it.

There are no creatures, but there are more (1d10+10) more of those "healing wands" here but only 1d6+3 still work.

--

This is the ship's sick bay. It is designed for Ophidian life, so even if anything was working it would not be good for humans.