Bigness
Here's where we really justify the title of this book. Monsters so big they have boogers bigger than Great Danes. This brings it all together, the farness rules and and the stuff on menaces. When Combine-R is stomping towards you on his tractor legs—his arms made from grain threshing machines reaching out to get agrarian on your butt—knowing how fast he's coming is pretty significant. How likely are you to outdistance something that can cover half a football field in a step?
Likewise, if you manage to leap up onto his legs then Combibe-R becomes less an antagonist and more a location. Those big threshing blades become a hazard you have to negotiate before hopping from his elbow to his control linkages while leaping away from the robot scarecrows that infest him like lice.
So how do we meaningfully handle crazy disparities in the scale of different characters? If it's you and your friends (and their monstrous friends) teaming up against the Arisen Mognarch or The Burning Hot Giant Man Made of Wicker, then this system will give you and the GM what you need to keep everything straight.
Smaller characters are harder to hit but easier to hurt. Bigger characters are easier to hit but harder to hurt. They're slower to react but faster when moving. It's sort of a lot to keep track of. Do bigger creatures have bigger dice pools sometimes, and smaller dice pools other times? What if when two giant creatures of the same general scale tangle?
Here's how you do it.
Everything has Bigness, a measure of which scale of action the creature or thing fits into. Kids and their monsters almost always have Bigness 1, meaning that their actions and their major challenges and concerns are on the kid scale. How about bigger stuff? That’s where the Bigness scale comes in. The bigger the Bigness, the bigger the monster.
Bigness has some direct effects on monster actions, which we’ll discuss below. Bigness also modifies how monster powers work according to Monster Might (see page 44 of Monsters and Other Childish Things). Each rank of Bigness multiplies Speed, Range, and Mass.
Bigness 1 (Normal Size)
Kids and their monsters, pets, family, friends, most stuff they think is important. x1 Speed/x1 Range/x1 Mass.
Bigness 2 (Big)
Really big animals like elephants and dinosaurs, and trucks that turn into robots. x2 Speed/x2 Range/x10 Mass.
Bigness 3 (Bigger)
The biggest animals, like whales. This is about as big as an all-natural, 100% meat creature can get, and then only in the ocean. On land it takes mojo or bones made of ultra-calcium (thanks to all the ultra-milk) to get this large and not collapse under the crushing weight of a physics buzzkill. Our favorite super-ape King Kong fits into this Bigness rank. x4 Speed/x5 Range/x100 Mass.
Bigness 4 (Biggest)
Huge, building-stomping beasties of this scale are big enough to sit AROUND the house when they sit around the house. Gamera is the classic cinematic exemplar of Bigness 4 monsters. It also fits the shiny, growing, monster-fighting heroes of the Science Patrol, Ultraman and his Ultrabuds. x8 Speed/x10 Range/x1,000 Mass.
Bigness 5 (Biggerest)
Only the most ginormous monsters achieve Bigness 5. They're creatures which can credibly be said to be civilization killers if they decide to stomp humanity back to the stone age. The all-time greatest and most super-sweet monster, Toho's Gojira, and his gallery of foes would be Bigness 5, which makes you wonder why they're always attacking little Japan. Fitting inside such a small country must be like trying to dance in pants two sizes too small. It'll make your butt look huge, and moving around comfortably is a trick. x10 Speed/x100 Range/x10,000 Mass.
And I'll Form the Left Arm!
Giant robots.
Oh yeah, we got that covered.
You can use the monster creation system to build mecha, power-suits, and giant robotronic mayhem machines. In most ways, they're just like monsters. Some may have brains of their own, and in that case dealing with them is almost identical to dealing with monsters, except their Personality and Favorite Thing likely reflect their programming or directives. "OBEY ALL EXECUTIVES OF MEGA-DYNA-TECH-CO," or for lactose-intolerant mad inventors, "DESTROY ALL CHEESE."
But what about a mech that's like a big vehicle without a brain of its own? Something that has to be piloted around and whatnot?
Somebody has to drive it.
That could be a guy in a instrument-encrusted control chair, or a kid with a remote control, or a monkey genius doing kung-fu in a 3D sensor field, but somebody has to tell the mech what to do. When a piloted mech is doing stuff, you always roll the LOWER of the dice associated with the bit you're using or the driver’s Stat+Skill combo (which depends on the mech, and is set when the thing is built). The mech's dice are still used for tracking damage, and for determining how much stuff it can affect, but its actions are limited by its technical constraints and the pilot's skill.
The exception to this is when Relationships are added into the roll. These are dropped on top of whichever dice pool is being used, because the above-and-beyond motivation they represent allows a pilot to exceed both his own and his mech's limitations.
That's all a little confusing, so how about an example? Martie “Duke234” Pooley used to spend all day pwning newbs in Bronze Star Recent Warfare when he was recruited by Project BLACK BOOK. As it turns out, all those ultra-realistic battle sims were a combination training program and screening process. When BLACK BOOK ID'd Duke234 as a perfect candidate for their Tele-A.P.E. Program he ended up in the back of a black van playing Bronze Star FOR REAL. He pilots his remote mech with his Hands + GameBox Epic Win dice pool of 8d; but if he fires up the TELE-A.P.E.'s 6d weapons pod to spray a room full of shoo-spiders with high-velocity narcotic paintballs, he'd only roll six dice because that's the weapons pod's total dice pool and it’s lower than his own dice pool (“these controls suck!”). But if he busts his Tele-A.P.E. into the room and discovers his parents goobed to the wall by shoo-spider web, he could add his My Lame Parents 3d relationship to the weapons pod's 6d pool.
Now, what about all the other stuff monsters have going for them—like the fact that ordinary weapons don’t bother them?
Well, that's something of a judgment call depending on how you want to use mechs in your game. If you want them to pose threats to monsters, then let them ignore the normal advantages that monsters have when facing strictly mundane foes. If you want monsters to be able to rip Gammaton-7 a new fusion-chute, then leave those advantages in place. I'd recommend going ahead and giving mecha a pass on these things because there's nothing really mundane about giant robots anyway, and because MONSTER VS. ROBOT is such an iconic theme, resonating strongly with our geeky souls.
What about small robots that combine into big robots?
Each smaller bot becomes a hit location in the bigger bot, which must be one or two Bigness ranks larger than the component mechs. Use the largest dice pool from among the smaller mechs to represent the dice pool of the larger mech's bit, and assign it a hit location number based on the big mech's body shape. The players roll the dice that their individual mechs contribute to the big mech's abilities when they come up.
BigDiff: Using Bigness
If Bigness is the same between two characters or monsters, then ignore it. Seriously, you'll almost never have to reference it at all. About the only thing to keep up with is how Bigness multiplies a creature's Monster Might. Beyond that, two Bigness 5 monstrosities pounding on each other while the city crumbles around them are handled just like two regular monsters going to town in the produce section of the local Sweeny Mart (except that's not bananas they're squishing to goo under their clawed feet).
When creatures of different Bigness ranks tangle, what's really important is the difference between their Bigness ranks. This Bigness Differential (BigDiff) is used as a modifier in a few significant ways.
The Smaller Character . . .
- Gains the equivalent of Wicked Fast equal to BigDiff.
- Gains Awesome equal to BigDiff when attacking and defending against the bigger character (see page XX for information on having more than two ranks of Awesome).
- Gains Awesome equal to BigDiff when using small size to do tricky things.
- Gains the equivalent of Tough in all hit locations equal to BigDiff.
- Gains the equivalent of Gnarly equal to BigDiff.
- Attacks against smaller characters gain Splash (see page XX) equal to the BigDiff.
- Can move the BigDiff in additional Farness (see page XX) each round.
Remember, BigDiff is the source of most of these modifiers, not Bigness itself. If King Ug and Mi-Go'Jirra (both Bigness 5 creatures) tangle, then you can ignore the BigDiff modifiers—they're on the same scale. While the city might suffer horribly, there's no need to track size mechanically between the creatures. But if M-Force sends out a team of Spirit Rangers to try and use Bigness 1 monsters to fight the really big monsters, then the kids and their monster friends might be in for some serious trouble—at least until the Essence Engines wind up enough to power them up to the next Energy Level.
We Could Have Prom In One of His Nostrils
What about a monster so huge it’s more like scenery than an arch-enemy?
If the Bigdiff is 3 or more, instead of running it like a fight between the whole giant monster and the smaller characters, everyone can jump onto one of the big character's locations and stage a scene there—a fight, a chase, whatever. See the movement and range rules on page XX and the Threat rules on page XX, and combine them.
The location where the smaller characters are riding is treated like a Threat with dice, qualities, and extras as normal, and with additional dice equal to twice the BigDiff. It's then handled in play just like a Threat, while the real action goes down on the scale of the characters atop it. Getting swallowed sometimes works this way, and you can stage scenes inside the big critter's innards.
Moving around on the back of the giant monster means treating the critter's hit locations as if they were BigDiff Distance away. If the BigDiff is 3, then traveling from Combine-R's Legs to his Head would mean covering three Farness steps with an appropriate means of movement.
In this mode, the giant creature is treated more like a dangerous location or set-piece than a distinct entity to be bested.
A Huge Example
The agents of the Monster Investigation Bureau finally realize that trying to take Mr. Crocker with conventional means is a losing proposition, so they call in heavy support from their contacts in the Military Industrial Complex. The boys from the MIB and the boys from the MIC don't always get along, but they share a few funding streams in the public/private administration model. So one quick call to General "Stormy" Stern, and there's a black-bag tactical team in a warehouse downtown ready to deploy a Thunderbolt 10 A.P.E. infantry force enhancer (in other words, a big robotic gorilla suit). Piloting the A.P.E. is specially cross-trained Sergeant Agent Cornsilk. Programmed into the A.P.E.'s pheromone targeting system is a stinky reptilian smell, like the snake house at the zoo (or a certain Egyptian crocodile god's bathwater).
For over a week, all is good (for a particularly exciting and perilous value of "good") for Benny and Mr. Crocker.
And then, on the way home after school one day, somebody throws a car at Benny. A sturdy Swedish car whose exceptional safety standards and robust diesel engine make it quite heavy.
Sometimes, it's good to be friends with a monster.
Mr. Crocker's big belly is way bigger inside than out, easily big enough to swallow all that fine European craftsmanship. Which, with a tidy roll, he manages with style, even if the space-warping gulp makes onlookers mildly queasy.
Then, from its loudspeakers, the A.P.E. speaks: "CEASE AND DESIST ALL SUPER-, PARA-, SEMI-, AB-, and UN-NATURAL ACTIVITIES IMMEDIATELY, AND SURRENDER FOR PROCESSING!"
To which Mr. Crocker answers, "Bring it."
But when the A.P.E. lumbers out from behind the Gas'n'Gulp, Mr. Crocker's nervous swallow is made more noticeable by the plaintive bleating of a car alarm from somewhere in the depths of his extra-dimensional innards.
The A.P.E. has Bigness 2, meaning a BigDiff of 1. It looms over Mr. Crocker even when he stands up straight and doesn't slouch. When they start fighting, here are the advantages each will have:
Mr. Crocker:
- Gains x1 Wicked Fast for all actions.
- Gains x1 Awesome when attacking the A.P.E.
- Gains x1 Awesome when doing tricky things that take advantage of his smaller size.
The A.P.E.
- Gains x1 Tough to all locations.
- Gains x1 Gnarly on all attacks.
- Moves +1 Farness ranks (if the optional range rules from page XX are used).
- Gains x1 Splash on all attacks.
The following excerpt is by Benjamin Baugh, © 2010. Enjoy. And please support Bigger Bads!
Fiddly Bits
Here are a few tweaks and nuances to the Monsters and Other Childish Things core rules, stuff that is already implicit but not explicit enough. It'll be useful later on when we get to the titular (hush, you—it doesn't mean that) big, bad GIANT MONSTERS. There's stuff about range and distance, stuff about stats for menaces and dangers that aren't exactly characters but are more than just a difficulty number to beat with a roll. Combined, these things let you know how hard you'll have to run to escape the dreaded Mecha-Rooster, and if you climb onto his leg, how hard it'll be fighting your way past his razor-sharp feathers and mecha-mites to get close enough to sock him in the vulnerable mecha-giblets. Sometimes, a giant monster is more a place than a person.
Pushing and Shoving
Sometimes, in the chaotic melee of an action scene or a crazy social blowout scene, you want your kid or monster to do something that doesn’t really hurt the other guy, but makes him do something or NOT do something. If you can set your foes up like suckers so you’re friends can put the chomp on them, even better.
This allows anybody to take an action that’s pretty similar to what a monster can do with a Useful power as outlined on page 43 of Monsters and Other Childish Things, specifically similar to the Tangle and Hold moves.
Basically what you do is this: During the Declare phase of the round, tell the GM what you want to force the other guy into, and make sure you and the GM have a good sense of what that’ll mean. You can limit your enemy’s choices, restrict his movement, or change his target for a little while, but you can’t win the fight automatically or totally take him out. The effects of this kind of pushing and shoving last for Width – 1 rounds.
Example: Benny McAlyster is having a pretty lousy day. This morning he completely blew a geometry test because he forgot to study—the Order of Horus tried to banish Mr. Crocker to the netherworld (“I’m not even from there! What’s up with these guys?”) . . . AGAIN. Then at lunch, Benny saw Mindy Mezlowski talking and laughing with that jerkwad from the field hockey team. Then when he got home, he discovered that his parents had been replaced with really unconvincing replicons with plastic hair, and there was a black van covered in antennas across the street. So when the MIB zap-and-grab team comes for Mr. Crocker just before bedtime, Benny is having none of it.
The MIB’s are trying to jab Mr. Crocker with a weird gizmo that paralyzes him, and so Benny decides to put himself between his buddy and a zapping. During the Declaration phase of the round, Benny’s player says that his intent is to keep the MIBs from being able to attack Mr. Crocker by FORCING them to attack HIM instead. His player suggests this would best be rolled as GUTS + COURAGE, and the GM agrees; throwing yourself into the path of a MIB zap-prod is a pretty courageous thing to do. What this will do is prevent the MIBs from attacking anybody except Benny for the width of his roll minus one in rounds.
And while Benny is getting the heck zapped out of him, Mr. Crocker can seriously put the bite on these black-suited bullies without worrying about the zap himself.
The MIB’s are trying to jab Mr. Crocker with a weird gizmo that paralyzes him, and so Benny decides to put himself between his buddy and a zapping. During the Declaration phase of the round, Benny’s player says that his intent is to keep the MIBs from being able to attack Mr. Crocker by FORCING them to attack HIM instead. His player suggests this would best be rolled as GUTS + COURAGE, and the GM agrees; throwing yourself into the path of a MIB zap-prod is a pretty courageous thing to do. What this will do is prevent the MIBs from attacking anybody except Benny for the width of his roll minus one in rounds.
And while Benny is getting the heck zapped out of him, Mr. Crocker can seriously put the bite on these black-suited bullies without worrying about the zap himself.
Helping Hands
Sometimes you want to do your friends a solid rather than do your foes a hurt. If this is your intent, then Declare it as usual and roll the appropriate dice pool. Perhaps you shout some useful factoid (like, “His weak part is his bladder sac! Kick him in the bladder sac!") and roll Brains + Remember. Or perhaps you feint an attack with Hands + Punching so your monster can get a more solid slap in with his spiky tail-knob.
The character you’re helping adds dice equal to your roll’s width to their dice pool next round.
The only restriction is that monsters can't do this. This is a kid-only trick. It has something to do with human empathy and egalitarianism, but has even more to do with a monster’s sometimes very distressing inability to tell the difference in shoving a friend out of the way to assist their Dodge skill and shoving a friend out of the way to assist their Achieve Low Earth Orbit Without a Rocket skill.
Example: Back to Benny’s bad day: Even while the MIBs are zapping him, Benny is trying to help Mr. Crocker out. He decides to grab hold of the MIBs and make it easier for Mr. Crocker to bite them real good. Benny rolls his GUTS + WRESTLING and gets 3x8. He throws three dice to Mr. Crocker to bulk out the monster’s multiple-action, bitey-bite surprise. Two crashing snaps of Mr. Crocker’s jaws follow, and Benny finds himself wrestling furiously with two sets of legs attached each to half a torso.
Benny then wonders briefly if being friends with Mr. Crocker has made him weird, because his first thought on seeing the MIB innards is, “At least they have some color other than black and white.”
Benny then wonders briefly if being friends with Mr. Crocker has made him weird, because his first thought on seeing the MIB innards is, “At least they have some color other than black and white.”
Those Who Help Themselves
Can you do your own “Helping Hands” actions and reap the benefits in your own dice pool? Sure! Set yourself up for a cool combo move next round and add your roll’s width in dice to your next action.
Of course, your next action has to make sense given the setup action.
You Declare your intention to do the setup action, but you don’t have to Declare ahead of time what you’re setting the other guy up for. You do that the next round, taking into account what you used for the self-help. This gives you some flexibility, so you might not declare the action you’d intended in the following round if the situation changes, but you can likely come up with something that’ll take advantage of the extra dice.
For example, let’s say you want to distract another kid with a nasty insult (Face + Putdown; let’s call it 4d in this case) and then sock him in the belly while he’s shaking his head and yelling at you (Hands + Punching). In the first round you declare the nasty insult and say you’re using it to set the guy up for something later. You roll four dice and get 2x7. The next round, you describe how adding insult helps you do injury, and if the GM thinks it makes sense you add those two dice to your Hands + Punching roll.
Extras: I Didn't Know You Could Do That!
Here are some new extras and some tweaked uses of old ones.
New Extras
Here are a few new monster Extras. Ask your GM before you use them.
Big: This Extra plugs into the Bigness rules. Bigness is a special-case Extra that has to be taken for each separate location. If you do that, it lets the monster operate higher on the Bigness scale.
Bounce: If your defensive roll beats an attack’s Width and Height, in addition to gobbling the attack’s dice safely, you can also bounce it back and inflict an attack on your attacker equal to his or her own roll. Each additional rank of Bounce allows you to either deflect another attack, or bounce it with one of the attacker's Extras. So, if you get nailed by a 2x5 attack with Gnarly x3 and defend with a 3x6 that has one rank of Bouncy, you can deliver that 2x5 attack right back at the other (very surprised) monster. If you have four ranks of Bounce, you can do that with all three of those Gnarly ranks too!
Immunity: Each rank of this extra makes a single monster location totally immune to something fairly specific—falling, fire, piercing, the judgment of others—even if it’s done by a monster or some other force that can hurt monsters. For all-over immunity, take this in every hit location. If the GM raises an eyebrow and goes “Hmmmmm” when you suggest and immunity to something like “Stuff That Hurts,” you can assume it means you’re reaching, and should dial it back to something more specific, like “Pointy Stuff That Hurts.”
Range: This one applies if you’re using the new “Farness” rules. It gets a proper description in that section. If you’re not using those rules, then don’t take this extra. It'll be less use than the panicked micro-cram you do minutes after you walk into class and realize the final exam is today and not Friday.
Sweet: Each rank of Sweet increases the Width of a successful roll for a Useful power when determining how well you do. It’s like Gnarly but for stuff that doesn't do damage. This doesn't improve your chance of getting a success—you still need to roll a set before you get to be totally Sweet—but it makes successes that you do roll that much nicer. Sweet also doesn’t affect Width for the purposes of initiative. If you want to be quicker, you still need Wicked Fast.
Splash: Each rank of Splash lets a power hit a second adjacent hit location on a target that’s roughly the same size as you (the same level of “Bigness”). If you hit a target's 1–2 location, and have one rank of Splash, then it also hits the 3–4 location. With five ranks of Splash you can hit six locations in one blast—that’s a whole person! (With monsters that's not as sure a thing, what with their tendency to have more limbs than is generally considered decent.) If there’s any choice to be made between available hit locations, the target gets to pick where your attack splashes. Spash damage does not ignore any Toughness the splashed locations might have, so it's not quite the same as how damage will roll-over if it hits a location without any more dice.
Revised Extras
And here are some tweaks on old Extras. Again, ask your GM first to make sure the changes are fair.
Awesome: What if you want more than two levels of Awesome? If the GM is cool with it, you can keep buying Awesome. Every two ranks lets you flip another die to whatever you like after you roll, and any remaining single ranks let you set one before the roll. So, five ranks of Awesome let you set one die before the roll and two dice after. Be careful not to spend too much on Awesome, though—if you can flip more dice than you have, you'll be in trouble unless your monster is mainlining a Relationship.
Spray: As written, Spray doesn’t scale and can be really dominant. Here’s a less macho version: Each time you take a rank in Spray, you can use one additional set to spam your declared action each time you take a rank of Spray. So to use two extra sets (up to three total), you'd need Spray x2.
Thunder Strike Fist Alpha!
As an optional rule, if you strike a dramatic pose and shout out the name of your attack, you can trade dice from the pool you roll on the attack for levels of Gnarly if you land a hit.
And when I say “you” I actually mean “you”—the personal sitting at the gaming table with your friends, who will almost certainly not totally lose it when you leap to your feat, do a few karate passes, and shout “Momma-Insulting Comeback Style!” in order to make your Face + Putdown attack really really hurt.
You have to strike a different pose and shout a different attack name every time you want to do this—you can't just spam your “Rocket Mandible Acid Bomb!!” over and over without earning the justified mockery of your peers.
Keep up with the Bigger Bads project at Kickstarter.com:
As a preview, here's a group of small enemies who can pose a very large threat.
Monkey Aliens from Planet K
"You have unmasked us! But you will not win—not while we control the power of Mecha Mi-Go'Jirra!"
Who are those guys in the ’70s suits with the sideburns and the really unconvincing accents? It's not just the clothes that make them weird. Some teachers at school are worse fashion victims. It's more how they're always sneering evilly, like they're so much better than everyone else. And how they tend to break out into maniacal laughter. And how they all seem to work for the same new company nobody has every heard of. And how they're always muttering "Puny humans!" under their breath. And how when they're angry, it's like for a split second they're not people anymore, and their faces are replaced by the coal-black mask-like faces of angry, angry monkeys.
BIGNESS: 1 (Normal size)
REAL DEAL: The Monkey Aliens from Planet K are an aggressive species of furry black space monkey, big and bipedal, strong and ruthless. Planet K is a cold, dark world circling a dead star, and their species is dying. They came to Earth to steal our resources, our water, our rich supply of monsters and other paranatural space-event vortices. They want to pollute and poison our planet to make it a comfy new home for Monkey Aliens.
There aren't many Monkey Aliens, most having died out on their own world, and those that survived are ruthless and cruel. They’re willing to do anything to prepare Earth for when their vast moonship arrives, carrying all the survivors of their homeworld and all the things they refused to leave behind—their favorite furniture, their space-CD collections, their army of robotic murder machines to destroy all puny humans....
The advanced force of Monkey Aliens who operate on Earth arrived via D-MAT Portal, a one-way and limited-use interplanetary teleporter carried on a robotic rocket probe. They have been specially prepared to blend in with humans—hence the wardrobe and the sideburns (all their data was from the 1970s). They are hidden by the use of polymorphic photonic mildew colonies which infest their skin and project the image of a regular human over each Monkey Alien. Well, approximately a regular human. When angered, injured, killed, or just feeling like letting it all hang out, a Monkey Alien's true monkey face is revealed.
The Monkey Aliens must take special precautions to survive in Earth's dangerously pure environment. All Monkey Aliens smoke three packs a day, and in this age of no smoking, they stand out. When fighting the Monkey Aliens, the question "Do you smell cigarette smoke?" should make you pay attention. Their diet consists almost entirely of refined sugars, saturated fats and cholesterol via pre-packaged snack cakes, from which they also extract vital artificial colorings and preservatives. They regularly sleep in beds lined in soil taken from toxic waste dumps and old glow-in-the-dark clock factories so they can get their daily dose of low-grade radiation. If you see a glowering guy dressed for disco stuffing his face with a Big Barn Double Cheesy, an Amish-Sized Spud Sack, and a Great Chuga'Lug while smoking and laughing mockingly as he reads a copy of Green Lifestyle, you might have found yourself a Monkey Alien from Planet K. Or just a regular, fashion-challenged human jerkwad.
Monkey Aliens often find work as “environmental consultants” and promote projects which will bring the Earth's environment in line with their requirements.
MODUS OPERANDI: The Monkey Aliens infiltrate human organizations, working their way to the top with a ruthless ambition that serves them as well in the corporate world as in their home jungles. They further their schemes to poison the Earth and to capture and study any weird or otherworldly creatures they encounter. Their advanced technology includes star metals hundreds of time stronger than steel, supercomputers, video game systems offering bloodier and higher-res games than anybody else; and, held in reserve, fearsome robotics technology based around a process called “bio-mechanization,” through which they can quickly build robotic duplicates of living creatures. But they don't trust thinking machines, so no artificial intelligence drives these things. Even when they build a replicon to replace a specific human, it must still be remote-controlled by a nearby Monkey Alien.
The Monkey Aliens will do just about anything to avoid being uncovered and exposed. There are not enough of them to fight all of humanity openly—at least, not yet—so they guard their conspiracy murderously. Somebody asking the wrong questions around a Monkey Alien-controlled project is going to have “a little accident” involving stumbling into the path of a ruby-light zapgun's scintillating disintegration beam.
The Monkey Aliens create biomech duplicates of any monster from which they can get a tissue sample, especially any giant monsters they encounter. When they're near defeat, the Monkey Aliens get manic, laugh a whole lot, and send out their biggest most dangerous mecha-replicon to smash, well, pretty much everything.
Grade Level
The Monkey Aliens have a hard time telling one human from another (they keep notes and have unflattering nicknames for humans based on obvious physical features), but recognize that little humans are usually young ones, and bigger humans are adult ones. They have dismissed the danger posed by little humans—having, in their outdated survey of Puny Earth Culture, missed all those kid-takes-out-the-burglars-at-Christmas movies. They consider children amusing rather than threatening, which means they like to be cruel to them rather than simply zap them until they're charred outlines on the wall. They're more likely to zap a cherished toy or family pet and then laugh at a child's tears, while utterly failing to recognize that some children have friends who can reach through time and poke an unwary Monkey Alien in the back when he was only five songars old and taking his first walk out on the petrified limbs of Home Tree, sending him teetering off the edge so his grownup self vanishes in a puff of logic.
So the Monkey Aliens present another one of those cases where they're more likely to do you some sort of horrible injury the older you are. Growing up is hard enough without creeps like this waiting to make it harder.
An interesting thing has started to happen for the Monkey Aliens, though—they've started to have kids on Earth. These young Monkey Aliens, by a total coincidence, end up in the same grade level as the player's kid characters. Adult and Kid Monkey Aliens conform to the usual types (dredged from your own hateful memories of school, work, and daily life, or from pages 96 to 112 of Monsters and Other Childish Things), with the modifiers below applied. A grownup Monkey Alien might be like the Mad Science Teacher with Monkey Alien modifiers, while her son might be like the Jock with Monkey Alien modifiers.
While adult Monkey Aliens are universally hateful, despising humanity and all its puny ways, their kids are—well, they've never seen Planet K. Never stared at the hideous wonder of the Chasms of Grue. Never wakened in their Home Tree to find their whole family poisoned by a rival clan. Never stared up at the dark star and really, really hated it. All they know is Earth, and GameBox, and TV, and fast food, and dodgeball (for which their natural cruelty is well suited). They don't even speak K'inglish particularly well, or take the Sacred Rites seriously. They still hate humanity, but in a vague sort of way they never really thought about. When they start meeting other kids who have seen way weirder things than an unmasked Monkey Alien, they might start to rethink this whole invasion thing.
Monkey Alien Modifiers—Stats and Skills
FEET: +0 (P.E. +2)
GUTS: –1
HANDS: +1 (Shop +2)
BRAINS: +1 (Out-Think +2)
FACE: –1 (Charm –1, Putdown +2, Connive +2)
Relationships
ADULTS: Planet K +3.
KIDS: Planet K +1; Earth +2.
Monkey Alien Mind-Mites
Imagine, if you will, a robot crab the size of a toilet. Add long, waving antennae and fangs that inject mind-altering drugs, and give the robot crab about a hundred brothers and sisters. Imagine it and its kin buried like ticks in the skin of some vast and terrible monster, controlling its lumbering actions with painful nips and ladles of brain gravy. Now, imagine yourself climbing desperately up the leg of this vast beast, and these robotic parasites burst free and come towards you, clacking their claws and grinding mouthparts that sound like Symphony for Buzzaw and Car-Crash in D Minor.
The Mind-Mites are the Monkey Aliens’ answer to monsters that they can't duplicate, and their weapon when they need to unleash destruction without revealing their mechs. The Mites infest a monster of Bigness 2 or bigger, and let the Monkey Aliens drive it like a remote-controlled race car (not very well, of course—more like an R.C. race car driven with your feet and tongue—but well enough to point it at the city you want messed up). If enterprising kids decide to climb up onto the giant monster, the Mind-Mites will disengage and fight them. Of course, this means the beast becomes uncontrolled, starts to thrash about, roars, and SCRATCHES at that darned itchy spot on its back....
The Mind-Mites are a Threat (see Chapter 2) with whatever dice pool you want to inflict on the players.
ATTACKS: The Mind-Mites are built to burrow into the impossibly dense skin of monsters the size of cruise liners. The thin skin of puny humans poses no challenge.
DEFENDS: Mind-Mites have simple programming. Attack first, and if they suffer losses, alternate defending and attacking. They'll attack one round, defend the next, and so on. Figuring out the pattern requires the same ingenuity and pattern recognition that a kid would use to learn Tic-Tac-Toe.
USEFUL: Mind-Mites can control the minds of giant monsters, which is pretty useful. They're not bright enough to use more complicated tactics though unless there's a Monkey Alien around to shout orders at them in the barking guttural language of Planet K.
EXTRAS: Area x1, Gnarly x1, Tough x1.
Weird Kid Power Source: Monkey Tech
The Monkey Aliens from Planet K brought technological wonders and horrors from their dying homeworld—devices able to transmute matter, read minds, and get five bars of reception on their Monkey Phones even when driving through a tunnel. Monkey Technology is biochemically keyed to the Monkey Alien who uses it, and disintegrates into a pile of inert and chemically boring sand if a puny hu-mon gets dirty hu-mon fingerprints all over it. But just as the children of Earth sometimes get the keys to the car, Monkey Aliens from Planet K sometimes loan choice gear to their ungrateful offspring.
Young Monkey Aliens can be played as Weird Kids. They get most of their kewl powerz from biochemically-coded Monkey Tech which is either disguised as ordinary objects or hidden under its own layer of polymorphic photonic mildew. Most Monkey Aliens share a general immunity to toxicity and ick, which can be represented by a 0-die skill in all their locations called “Immune to Ick,” which Defends and gives them 1 rank of the Immunity extra. This means they can drink toxic waste and rub arsenic on their legs and only find it as irritating as they generally find everything.
Young Monkey Aliens may have lost this immunity after growing up in Earth’s pristine environment, so if you’re playing a Monster Alien kid, you don’t have to use your Weird Dice on this if you don’t want.
Here are some examples of Monkey Tech to get you started.
Multiplex Super Suit (10 dice total)
This silvery gray jumpsuit can look like whatever you want it to look like, and includes the following Weird Skills:
• Hands: Rip-Stop Super Weave 0d (Tough 1), Mylo-Muscle Fibers 1d (Useful: super-strong; Attacks).
• Feet: Rip-Stop Super Weave 0d (Tough 1), Energy Return Thrusters 1d (Useful: super jump; Defends).
• Guts: Rip-Stop Super Weave 0d (Tough 1).
• Face: Rip-Stop Super Weave 0d (Tough 1), Fashion Sensor 2d (Useful: shift appearance to look cool).
Omni-Watch 5d
A big, clunky, retro-looking watch with all sorts of unexpected special features.
• Hands: Zap! 2d (Attacks).
• Brains: Magneto-Kinesis 2d (Useful: move stuff around with magnetic fields), Hack-o-Matic 1d (Useful: automatically hack into electronic machines).
Basilisk Shades 5d
A pair of shiny, gold Elvis sunglasses.
• Face: I Am Cooler Than You 2d (Useful: make others think you’re the coolest; Attacks: make others feel so bad about not being cool, they want to die), Freeze! 2d (Useful: paralyze a target with a neural feedback loop).
Rocket Chucks 5d
These sneakers look like an ordinary pair of Chuck Taylors, except the star emblem looks more like a black planet orbiting a dead sun. Also, there’s a certain funky footy smell. They let a Monkey Kid fly or, if he’s inclined, deliver rocket-assisted kicks to the giblets.
• Feet: Woosh! 2d (Useful: fly!; Defends; Attacks).
Fly Eye for the Monkey Guy 5d
A pair of thick, nerdy glasses and a cloud of tiny robot flies. The one flies around and shows a Monkey Kid what it sees on the other.
• Brains: I.C.U. 2d (Useful: see what the flies see), Tagged and Bagged 2d (Useful: tag somebody with a fly and follow them anywhere), Strafing Run 1d (Attacks: teeny tiny robot flies with teeny tiny LAZORZ).
Mecha Mi-Go'Jirra, Attack!
You can turn any non-robot giant monster into a robot pretty easily, just by changing its physical descriptions a little bit and varying the FX on some of its abilities. See page XX for more info on the different sorts of mechs: piloted, autonomous, robot, remote-controlled, etc.
The Monkey Aliens like to use a remote control to activate a robot's simple programmed routines—walk, jump, fly, shoot the Omega Beam. Sometimes these remote controls are small and handheld, and sometimes they're big consoles with huge dual view-screens showing an image from each of the robot's eyes.
One semi-classic model here is to put control of the mech version of a heroic giant monster in the hands of a semi-sympathetic NPC. Even if the Monkey Aliens from Planet K are responsible for the creation of your monster's mecha doppelganger, that new girl in school who you have a crush on could still be secretly controlling the mecha-monster, possibly via a radio-relay built into her life-saving artificial cybernetic heart...
Yeah! Pathos, baby! Bring it.
###
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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcd
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“That thing is pretty big.”
“You said it. BIG.”
“I’d even say huge.”
“You know what’s the worst thing about something that big?”
“I can think of a few things. . . ”
“It’s like being really close to a high-school kid, and seeing all the pores gaping open and oozing grease or clogged up with black ick and bulging with gunk. Even from all the way over here, I can totally see how gross that thing’s skin is.”
“That’s a pretty weird thing to be grossed out by, for a shiny, green, iridescent mantis the size of my dad’s car.”
“Yeah, but SHINY. I do not ooze gunk, except from my warp-glands, and that’s totally rad gunk.”
“Well, I don’t leak gunk either.”
“Not yet. When you get to high school, they do something to your face. I’ve been studying humanity, so I figured out how it works. They drill out your pores so they leak, they poke your larynx so your voice comes out all broken and weird, and they make you grow a completely tragic, wispy little mustache, possibly through the use of exotic radiation. Also, they make you smell like yak butt, but this is possibly some kind of scam to get you to buy body spray, or so the television leads me to believe.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear any of that.”
“Why?”
“I just discovered something even more horrible about a creature that big than how easy it is to see its goopy pores.”
“What?”
“The size of its dumps.”
“Oh dude, I really did not want to go there.”
“Well we’re going to have to. It just dropped a duke on our neighborhood, and everybody is visiting from out of town.”
“This is the worst Thanksgiving ever.”
Bigger Bads
Bigger Bads is a new, 112-page sourcebook for the roleplaying game Monsters and Other Childish Things, written by Monsters creator Benjamin Baugh—multiple Ennie Award nominee for Monsters and Other Childish Things and the Monsters sourcebook The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor—and illustrated by Monsters artist Robert Mansperger.
Bigger Bads is a book about monsters. Big monsters. Giant monsters. Ginormous monsters. Ginormous monsters and the kids who love them (or who get eaten by them).
We play loose with scale in the Monsters and Other Childish Things core rules, leaving questions of size vaguely vague. My monster is the size of a Jeep, yours is as big as three rusty old refrigerators, Dave’s is the size of a Pez dispenser—but dude, it is a seriously gnarly Pez dispenser, and when its head snaps back it isn’t chalky candy lozenges that pop out, it’s 500 pounds of broken bones and teeth and dried-up hairballs. It’s noisy, messy, and smells like a mummy threw up.
What matters most in Monsters is the scale of action that the monsters operated on and paid attention to—stuff that was kid-scale and affected kid life. It doesn’t really matter if one monster is the size of a parrot and the other the size of a Peugeot.
Well, folks, it’s time we changed all that.
Bigger Bads gives you a system to take the action from kid scale all the way up to giga-kid scale. With Bigger Bads you can build, play, fight, flee, and befriend monsters big enough to eat mountains and poo significantly-smellier mountains. Sometimes, a monster gets so big that it’s less a character or antagonist and more a location to stage some crazy action. Implausible, you say—but you’ll eat that word in a crow sandwich when you have your first crazy monster-fight on the back of Mi-Go'Jirra against the monkey aliens from Planet K controlling the great beast’s prehuman brain with psychic mega-lice.
And that's just the start. A new mini-setting, new rules for range, threats, and weird kid powers, and a whole slew of new antagonists round it out.
Starting December 21, 2009, Bigger Bads goes up for "ransom," like past Arc Dream projects such as the Reign Enchiridion, Delta Green: Eyes Only and Wild Talents. If Bigger Bads gets enough backers on Kickstarter then we'll illustrate and layout this awesome book and send it out.
Click here to back Bigger Bads and reserve a copy now!
What’s In Bigger Bads?
Glad you asked!
Chapter 1: Fiddly Bits
- Pushing and Shoving
- Helping Hands
- New Extras
- Big
- Bounce
- Immunity
- Range
- Sweet
- Splash
- Tweaked Extras
- Awesome
- Spray
Chapter 2: Threats—Bad Things Happening to Good People
- Threat Dice Pools
- Threat Actions
- Threat Qualities and Extras
- To Me, My Minions!
- ‘Hurting’ a Threat
- A Menagerie of Menaces
- Escaped Ebola Monkeys
- Snakes—Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?
- The Collapsing Building Is Now On Fire
- MIB Grab-Squad
- Excruciator Hatchings
- Robo-Bees
- The Mean Kids
- Traversing the Treacherous Nighttime Rooftops of Our Fair City
- Possessed Toy Factory
- The Seven Stars Secret Kung Fu Brotherhood
- The Goo That Ate the Cafeteria
- The Luchacabra Fighters
Chapter 3: Farness—I Can Melt Your Face From Way Over Here
- Come Over Here and Say That
- Hey! Can You Hear Me, Jerkwad?
- Default Farness
- How Far Can His Pus Glands Squirt?
- Getting Closer (or Farther)
- Playing Chase
- Children Fly for Free!
Chapter 4: Bigness—My Pal Leviathan
- The Scales of Bigness
- Bigness 1: Normal Size
- Bigness 2: Big (elephant)
- Bigness 3: Bigger (whale)
- Bigness 4: Biggest (skyscraper)
- Bigness 5: Biggerest (Mi-Go’Jirrah)
- And I’ll Form the Left Arm!
- Using Bigness
- Bigness and Hauling Butt
- We Could Have Prom In One of His Nostrils
- A Huge Example
Chapter 5: Why Are You So Weird?
- Who Are These Weird Kids?
- Wait, Weird Skills? That’s Not In the Core Book!
- Where Do Weird Skills Come From?
- Weird Skills Are Creepy
- Making Your Own Weird Skills
- The Down Side
- Caught Between Two Worlds
- Dude, Seriously? The More I Screw Up My Family, The More Awesome I Am?
- Don’t Take My Character Away!
- No Monster
- How It Works
Chapter 6: Agonizing Antagonists
- Agent C. Occupant (Bigness 1)
- Clueless S.O. (Bigness 1)
- Col. Brodie Block, Commander of Project Black Book (Bigness 1)
- The Grumps (Bigness 1)
- Monkey Aliens From Planet K (Bigness 1)
- Weird Monkey Tech
- Mecha Mi-Go’Jirra, Attack!
- Sidekick the Eager Hostage (Bigness 1)
- Your Hot New Stepmom From California (Bigness 1)
- Bugnutz Reloaded (Bigness 2)
- Killdozer, the Dozer That . . . Killlllllls (Bigness 2)
- Thunderbolt 10 A.P.E. (aka Thundermonkey) (Bigness 2)
- Agents of I.N.C. (International Neoscience Council, aka Inflatable Ninja Corp.) (Bigness 3)
- Weird Kid Power Source: Neoscience!
- So, You Have Decided to Purchase a New I.N.C. Neo-Energizer
- Combine-R (Bigness 3)
- Sal Nath (Bigness 1)
- The Doom That Came to Sal Nath’s (Bigness 3)
- Gargantua-Mago, the Ginormous Man (Bigness 4)
- Weird Kid Power Source: The Dirty Dank Dark Arts
- Levia A. Than, CEO of Maximega Co. LLC (Bigness 4)
- Leviathan, Squamous Fish-God of the Dread Subhumanoids (Bigness 4)
- Maximega Co. Security Associates (Bigness 1)
- Subhumanoid H.R. Rep. (Bigness 1)
- There’s Something Fishy About That New Kid . . .
- Weird Kid Power Source: Subhumanoid Hybridization
- Weird Kid Power Source: Mi-Cells
Chapter 7: Campaign Jumpstart—Go Go Monster Force Zeta!
Click here to help make Bigger Bads a reality at Kickstarter!
For Arc Dream, first there was “Wild Talents,” our most famous case. Then there was the “Godlike” Game Moderator’s Screen. There were two Delta Green books, developed and published in an arrangement with Pagan Publishing. Now we have the “Reign Enchiridion,” and we’ll be using the same system for most of our upcoming projects.
With our games it’s not strictly speaking a ransom, of course. In a classic ransom, seen most often with Greg’s “Reign” supplements and “Meatbot Massacre,” if you collect enough money from contributors you release the project as a free download for anyone and everyone. That works well for a downloadable PDF. It doesn’t work as well for a physical book with its more extensive costs.
With Arc Dream’s version, we ask prospective customers to “pledge” to pre-order the game. If we get enough pledges, we collect the money and use it to finish and manufacture the book. Each person who contributed to the pledge drive gets a copy. The rest that we manufacture are then available for sale.
If we don’t get enough pledges to cover the costs, then we don’t release the book. We pay the writer for his or her work, but we don’t sink any more money into the project. At best it might show up later as a simple PDF in “ashcan” format, with no art, available for sale to help recoup the investment that we made in the writing. But no book.
One question comes up pretty often: Why do it this way?
The Bills, and How to Pay Them
First, a ransom scheme is a quick and dirty market study. Arc Dream and its writers are pretty well established with a core audience of regular players. If we can’t get a couple hundred of those gamers to buy into a project that we at Arc Dream really love, then what chance do we have of selling it to the rest of the gaming world? For a cash-poor company like ours—yes, after all these years we remain cash poor and probably always will—that’s the best kind of market research that we can get.
Second, did I mention how we’re cash poor? Manufacturing a book, shipping it on very heavy pallets across the country or around the world, storing it safely in a warehouse, maintaining inventory controls and packaging it safely for shipment to consumers—all those things cost money. And then there’s the work that’s involved beforehand, all the man-hours that go into writing, editing, art, and page design. If Arc Dream had deep pockets, we’d pay for all that stuff out of hand and count on annual sales to cover the expenses, just like a real grown-up publisher. But we aren’t, and we don’t.
The fact is, Arc Dream exists pretty much just so that Dennis Detwiller and I can make the games that we love the way that we want to see them made. Using a ransom to verify that there’s a minimum baseline level of interest in a product is about our only nod to market forces.
The up side? If you share our sensibilities, you get to enjoy the resulting products just like we do. The down side? We have rather specific sensibilities and no marketing budget to expand our customer base, so we don’t often sell very many books. And that’s OK—as long as a project doesn’t leave us poorer than when we started.
The ransom guarantees that a new game will sell at least enough copies to pay for itself.
Now, How Can We Sweeten the Pot?
The ransom model—for lack of a better term—has worked out pretty well for us so far. But there’s one issue where we need some feedback: What can we do to reward contributors who pledge to make the book happen rather than waiting to buy it after its release? Those folks show us a lot of trust by putting up cash for a product based only on a few previews and our word that it’ll be good. They deserve something special.
One possibility is releasing the initial version with a unique cover. If you pledge for the book, you get a copy that has different cover art than the version that we print for sale to the rest of the world.
(EDIT BY SHANE: A unique cover is something we'll do for future projects, but it's probably not feasible for the Reign Enchiridion. The Enchiridion has such a low price point that multiple short printings will make it lose money.)
In addition, you get listed by name in the book’s masthead—the page with all the copyright information at the beginning of the book—as a contributor who helped make the book a reality.
Is that enough? What else could we do to reward contributors?
And before you mention it, autographed copies aren’t feasible. I’m in Alabama, Dennis is in Vancouver, Greg is in Chicago, Benjamin Baugh is in Georgia, Todd Shearer is in Maryland—you get the idea. We use several different printers, but they’re usually in the Midwest unless they’re in Hong Kong, and the warehouse that takes delivery of the books is in Nevada. The wonders of modern communications make autographs a little tricky.
So, autographs aside, please send us your suggestions. Post comments here, to the Cult of ORE group, or send an email. Thanks!
We're sharing space with our friends at Holistic Design, so look for us in booths 407/409 in the Marriott Marquis Exhibitor Hall.
We're running a LOT of games over the weekend, including a whole series of Midnight Games featuring registered games, pickup games, and spooky midnight movies for people who just want to come hang out.
Click here to download the Midnight Is For Monsters flyer.
Click here to download the Arc Dream DragonCon Events flyer, a handy one-page summary.
Click here to download the Arc Dream DragonCon Events flyer, a handy one-page summary.
And here's the full list of Arc Dream events at DragonCon 2009!
FRIDAY
1:00 P.M.—Godlike: Operation Torch
November 1942: The Allies are landing on North Africa! Every sign indicates that this landing ought to go smoothly as long as French forces don't put up a fight -- and as long as there are no German Talents around.... This scenario is a preview of the upcoming campaign book "Operation Torch" for "Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946." Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Allan Goodall.
2:30 P.M.—Games On Demand!
Numerous indie/small press games will be available for anyone interested. Sign up for games with the table custodians and play a new game immediately. Availability of particular games will be determined by the table custodians and the available game masters. Generic tickets only. Hosted by Shane Ivey, Benjamin Baugh and Scott Acker.
6:00 P.M.—Monsters and Other Childish Things: Sucrose Park
Designed as the ultimate daycare center, Sucrose Park looks after hundreds of kids while their parents gamble away their college tuition in nearby casinos. A corporate wonderland of rides, ball pits, arcades and costumed mascots from popular cartoons await. Too bad the owner of the park never wants anyone to leave. Ever. All the neon lights and laser tag arenas can’t hide the fact that Sucrose Park is a prison. It’s time to break out. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Ross Payton.
Midnight—The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor
The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor sees doleful foundlings with murky pasts in a great, dreary orphanage filled with dangerous truths. Players together face the monstrous dangers of their new home and uncover their own forgotten secrets. Can you learn the truth of your own sad history? And can you make friends with the monster at the bottom of the well? How about the one in the rickety old mill? Or the one in the cave by the sea? Or the one. . . . Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Benjamin Baugh.
Midnight—Target: Planet Earth
As an alien invader, you must observe the hairless apes and analyze their weaknesses. But it's not easy avoiding nosey neighbors, snooping reporters, and the ominious Persons in Brown. And what's with the weird lights coming from the abandoned bubblegum factory at the edge of town? Target: Planet Earth! A Wild Talents game of alien invasion and futile resistance. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Allan Goodall.
SATURDAY
2:30 P.M.—Games On Demand!
Numerous indie/small press games will be available for anyone interested. Sign up for games with the table custodians and play a new game immediately. Availability of particular games will be determined by the table custodians and the available game masters. Generic tickets only. Hosted by Shane Ivey, Benjamin Baugh, Ross Payton and Scott Acker.
6:00 P.M.—Godlike: Black Devils Brigade
December, 1943: Elements of two divisions failed to wrest Hill 960 from the Germans. In their first real combat mission, the job of taking Monte la Difensa now falls to the joint American-Canadian First Special Service Force. Can this elite unit -- spearheaded by the men of the Talent Section -- do the impossible and succeed where so many others have failed? Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Allan Goodall.
Midnight—Monsters and Other Childish Things: Sucrose Park
Designed as the ultimate daycare center, Sucrose Park looks after hundreds of kids while their parents gamble away their college tuition in nearby casinos. A corporate wonderland of rides, ball pits, arcades and costumed mascots from popular cartoons await. Too bad the owner of the park never wants anyone to leave. Ever. All the neon lights and laser tag arenas can’t hide the fact that Sucrose Park is a prison. It’s time to break out. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Ross Payton.
Midnight—The Kerberos Club
The Kerberos Club is an adventure of superhero roleplaying in Victorian London. When the victims and enthusiasts of magic and bizarre science meet in an infamous club for “the Strange,” thrilling action is sure to follow. Malum Necessarium! Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games Hosted by Benjamin Baugh.
SUNDAY
1:00 P.M.—Godlike: Black Devils Brigade
January, 1944: The American-Canadian First Special Service Force are relieved from their successful attack on Monte Majo, only to learn that their relief force has lost the mountain. The Force must, again, take the last hill blocking the Allies from Liri Valley and a drive on Rome. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Allan Goodall.
1:00 P.M.—Wild Talents: The Age of MasksYou want to be a superhero? No such thing. But you can be a mask, which is why you’re here. The difference? Superheroes didn’t choose to be what they turned out to be. They made the best with what they had. That’s why they died off. Masks want to be masks. Need to be. Being a mask is the greatest high known to man. The governments passed those crackdown laws, but the call of the mask is still strong. Strong enough to call you. Let's get started. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Ross Payton.
6:00 P.M.—The Kerberos Club
The Kerberos Club is an adventure of superhero roleplaying in Victorian London. When the victims and enthusiasts of magic and bizarre science meet in an infamous club for “the Strange,” thrilling action is sure to follow. Malum Necessarium! Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games Hosted by Benjamin Baugh.
Midnight—Delta Green: Night Shift
“A” Cell has assigned your team to protect a vital site in the interests of national security: The largest indoor retail facility in North America. It has been a long and brutal uphill battle protecting the innocent and unwary from the predators of society but so far it has been completely mundane. Your tactical response team trains with the best gear money can buy, but to what end? Tonight you'll find out...Featuring new rules for combat from the upcoming sourcebook Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Ross Payton.
Midnight—This Favored Land
The Battle of Gettysburg is into its second day, and something terrible is happening to the wounded men near Spangler's Spring. It's up to the PCs to investigate and stop the horror. Superhero roleplaying during the War Between the States. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Allan Goodall.
MONDAY
1:00 P.M.—The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor
The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor sees doleful foundlings with murky pasts in a great, dreary orphanage filled with dangerous truths. Players together face the monstrous dangers of their new home and uncover their own forgotten secrets. Can you learn the truth of your own sad history? And can you make friends with the monster at the bottom of the well? How about the one in the rickety old mill? Or the one in the cave by the sea? Or the one. . . . Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Benjamin Baugh.
1:00 P.M.—This Favored Land
Early spring, 1863. A unique band of superpowered soldiers -- half Yankee, half Rebel -- desert from their units to hunt a dangerous common enemy in Tennessee's Smokey Mountains. Not long ago they were enemies, but now they must unite in pursuit of justice and vengeance. Superhero roleplaying during the War Between the States. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Allan Goodall.
1:00 P.M.—Delta Green: Night Shift
“A” Cell has assigned your team to protect a vital site in the interests of national security: The largest indoor retail facility in North America. It has been a long and brutal uphill battle protecting the innocent and unwary from the predators of society but so far it has been completely mundane. Your tactical response team trains with the best gear money can buy, but to what end? Tonight you'll find out...Featuring new rules for combat from the upcoming sourcebook Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity. Pregenerated characters and all supplies are provided. After the game each player gets a $5 coupon for Arc Dream Publishing games. Hosted by Ross Payton.
In the weapon stats on page 55, the reload time for the Sharps Carbine is listed as "5*".
This is wrong. It should be listed as "3".
It can be hard to define exactly what that style is, but it usually has a lot to do with a detailed and heavily-researched approach to history, secrets that people die or kill to protect, a sense that power always comes with consequences, and action that is fast, bloody and suspenseful. It doesn't hurt if Greg Stolze and Kenneth Hite are the authors, or if I can get Todd Shearer to provide illustrations.
Then there's Grim War, a Wild Talents setting book by Greg Stolze and Kenneth Hite, with art by Todd Shearer.
It's a world with secretive cabals of magicians who summon inhuman powers from beyond our reality, and very public groups of superpowered mutants whose abilities are as dangerous as they are amazing.
Boy, is it fun.
If you know what Greg Stolze and John Tynes did in Unknown Armies, and what Greg Stolze, Ken Hite, Dennis and I did in Wild Talents, then you're a fair step toward grasping what Grim War is all about.
But let's take a look at the book's introduction by Greg Stolze, just to make sure.
Grim War will debut at GenCon 2009.
History, Part One: The magicians have always been around.
Whether it was the pythian oracle, the witch of Endor, bone-pointing Aboriginal killers or voodoo-active pirates, there have always been people around who could call upon the supernatural and have it answer. There are varieties (spirit-binders, fetish-makers, animist shamans) but most forms of magic have long pedigrees.
They stayed hidden for a long time, mostly because the typical reaction of people without magic is quite violent when confronted with people who do have magic. There are all kinds of crazy stories about the Borgia popes being satanic magicians, about Pilgrim warlocks using magic to clean out the natives before being unmasked at the Salem trials, about the efficacy of human sacrifice in Central America going head-to-head with the angelic protectors of Catholic conquistadors. It’s hard to say anything for sure before the Theosophists came out into the open and Spiritualist Movement surged after World War I. But there were just enough people eager for some kind of light after the war’s darkness, hoping for contact with the Other Side and reassurance that mankind was being guided to a better place. Lots of people pursued Spiritualism, and a few things got scientifically verified.
Magic worked. It could contact dead people and provide information that indisputably demonstrated the existence of some kind of human memory after the death of the physical body.
Magic could also contact immaterial intelligences that were not and had never been human.
Not everyone could do it. Two “operators” of equal education could perform the exact same rites, with only one succeeding. Common wisdom holds that some immaterial force of will is necessary to infuse the form of a spell with the energy to operate. Only those with powerful personalities seem to become magicians.
Among those who can do magic at all, the simplest sort seems to be subtle influence on the physical world.
Gross distortions of the physical world aren’t nearly as common or easy. But they aren’t impossible.
The vogue for magic lasted until a few scrappy investigators discovered that, far from being a new cultural force, there had been magicians quietly influencing politics for as long as fifty years. The calumny that magicians caused the Great War is certainly a gross oversimplification, but most people believe that there were magicians who encouraged it and spirits that greatly enjoyed or benefitted from it. As you might guess, the spirits who got off on trench warfare are not the most pleasant kind.
But magic didn’t really earn the fear and hatred of the common man until the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Based around a cabal of enchanters, the Nazis were the first openly sorcerous government. Their atrocities are now considered the primary example of what magicians do when given authority.
After World War II, the practice of ritual magic was banned in most countries, and much of the lore was lost or suppressed. While both the U.S. and USSR legally repressed the practice (after the Supreme Court decided, in The People vs. Megan Boroviak, that magic acts were separate from religion and were therefore exempt from Constitutional protection), it’s long been suspected that both sides were secretly using enchantment in their games of espionage, brinksmanship and battles through proxy nations. Indeed, a few dramatic screwups on both sides revealed to all but the most blindly patriotic that most nations were attempting, desperately in some cases, to acquire or recreate lost occult knowledge. A play on one of the words for a magical tome is one reason that the long period of covert strife between Russia and America is called the Grim Wars.
Despite the rhetoric of People for Religious Liberation (a so-called “magicians-rights” movement) that “once you outlaw magic, only outlaws will use magic,” most people abhor sorcery. Of course, laws and social opprobrium are leveled against murder, theft and drug abuse too, and an awful lot of that goes on.
History, Part Two: The mutants have always been around.
A few credulous hero-worshippers claim mutation every time a myth describes someone of unusual strength or unnatural prowess. But between the research of Charles Fort (which earned him the post of U.S. Secretary for Unusual Humanity) and a few well-publicized corpses preserved with obvious traits off the baseline, it seems clear that there were superpowered mutants in the past, even if Napoleon and Ghengis Khan weren’t among their number.
They’re rare, but becoming less so. The reason for their rarity goes to the foundations of the phenomenon. There are a number of factors that need to be fulfilled before someone becomes a functioning, metahuman mutant.
First off, they need the genetic predisposition. It’s typically theorized that one person in a million has it. In a population of six billion people worldwide, that means there are 6,000 with the potential to develop a power.
Secondly, the proto-mutant has to survive into adulthood. This is less of an issue in the modern developed world, but historical child mortality rates were high.
Furthermore, activating the genes requires a great deal of biological effort. It’s like bearing a child or recovering from a massive injury. Girls who don’t get enough to eat pubesce later. Children deprived of nutrients grow up stunted. Potential mutants whose bodies are strained just trying to survive and fight off infection have no resources left for a massive change.
Even among someone who gets plenty to eat and has the potential, the powers won’t manifest if the host doesn’t accept them. They can be present, but unaccessible. Someone who is constantly praised and supported as a child is unlikely to develop low-self esteem as an adult without some serious trauma or life-changing experience, possibly not even then. Similarly, someone who lives his entire life as an ordinary man without heat vision is unlikely to try to use heat vision when he’s a theology grad student. The potential is there, but he doesn’t even suspect it. Since mutant powers typically manifest after the end of puberty (if they emerge at all), they used to be found most often in people who were already unstable, or who believed in their ability to do inhuman things, or who were in peril serious enough to jolt them out of their usual self-image.
Ironically enough, this last factor meant that many historical mutants thought they were doing magic, when in fact the ritual trappings of enchantment only gave them a framework for accepting power that was theirs all along.
Sorcery aside, historical mutants emerged in conflicts and amidst great tragedies. At the same time that Spiritualism was popularizing the practice of magic, American belief in eugenics was presenting some primitive clues about the presence of beneficial mutation. The unusual brutality of the Civil War had produced several prominent mutants (the best known being “Stonewall” Jackson, the general no bullet could touch), so American soldiers going into the Great War were psychologically prepared to at least hope they could develop some life-saving power under fire. Between the wars, the surviving war hero mutants on both sides became cultural heroes, as well as objects of intense scientific scrutiny. This process only accelerated in the Second World War, where America’s bountiful and well-defended breadbasket ensured that their well-fed soldiery had the necessary calories to fuel the development of powers, if circumstance put them in harm’s way.
Current Events
Between costumed mutants fighting at the forefront of the Vietnam War while enchanters wormed their way through Grim War espionage, the life of the average person continued remarkably free of the influence of either. That started to change towards the end of the millennium, for both of the very different power types.
The push of mutancy began when developed countries started using hormones on their herds. This increased weight gain, raised milk production, and the amounts that remained in the food products were so miniscule that they were deemed insignificant. But in the last thirty years of the twentieth century, the onset of puberty steadily crept earlier in first world nations, possibly for no reason beyond protein-heavy diets. Whatever the reason, potential mutant powers started unlocking earlier. Instead of becoming available to people in their mid twenties (with fairly developed self-images) they were at hand to teens and adolescents whose identities were fluid enough to accept parahuman power. These same adolescents were also the first generations to grow up with television, and therefore, with televised images of adored and pampered mutants exhibiting their powers.
The mutant population surged, even as many of the teens developing their powers terrified society with their poor power control, or poor grasp of consequences. The race is on to identify the genes controlling mutantcy, but even without a medical test, genetic databases can churn out lists of likely positives. Some people well into their mature years have been informed, out of the blue, that they have at least a 25% chance of being mutant-positive. This pool of potential repressed mutants have plenty of sponsorship offers from governments, corporations and other interested parties with psychological programs designed to tease power out into the open.
Some of the more secretive programs utilize the mind-bending powers of enchantment. While it had languished in the shadows, it remained popular with mafias, smugglers, intelligence agencies, terror cells, cults and other secretive organizations. As computers developed in the 1980s, some of the better-funded and scientifically-minded sorcerers began applying logical and mathematical analysis to the theory and practice of enchantment. They were able to streamline things considerably, so powerful, compact spells were available just as the Internet arrived and made keeping secrets far, far harder.
Leaks were inevitable and, with the media playing up the threat of immature wild mutants (and their rarer but just as dangerous senile counterparts), even some ordinary people started researching a few spells for self-defense. After all, being bulletproof was one of the more common mutations.
Welcome to the Grim War. This is a campaign setting for Wild Talents: Superhero Roleplaying in a World Gone Mad, and it touches on the “Company” rules from the roleplaying game Reign. You need Wild Talents to play, while the rules from Reign can move the action onto a broader level. For more about Wild Talents, see www.arcdream.com. For more about Reign, visit www.gregstolze.com.
Our booth will be in the Marquis Ballrom, Exhibitor Hall 2. We're sharing space with Holistic Design, so look for their name on the maps.
Remember, you can buy any of our games at the Arc Dream website and arrange to pick up your order in person at DragonCon, and pay no shipping costs.
Oh, and we'll be running a ton of games.
Friday, 4 September 2009
10:00 AM — Indie RPG Introductions (panel with Benjamin Baugh, Allan Goodall, Shane Ivey, Ross Payton and others).
1:00 PM — Operation Torch (Godlike game with Allan Goodall)
1:00 PM — Armor Soldier! (Wild Talents game with Kevin Pezzano)
1:00 PM — Retro Futurism (panel with Benjamin Baugh and others)
2:30 PM — Games on Demand (Benjamin Baugh, Shane Ivey) Games on Demand at DragonCon Arc Dream Publishing and Scott “Saint&Sinner” Acker are hosting Indie Games on Demand. Join us at the Open Gaming rooms, Friday and Saturday from 2:30 PM to 5:00 PM.
6:00 PM — Sucrose Park (Monsters and Other Childish Things game with Ross Payton)
6:00 PM — Operation Torch (Godlike game with Kevin Pezzano)
Midnight — The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor (Monsters and Other Childish Things game with Benjamin Baugh)
Midnight — Target: Planet Earth (Wild Talents game with Allan Goodall)
Midnight Gaming at the Hilton
Midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, we’re taking over Science Track conference room #202 in the Hilton. Join us for late-night gaming with Arc Dream Publishing and movies from Lurker Films!
Saturday, 5 September 2009
1:00 PM — Indie RPG Feedback (panel with Benjamin Baugh, Allan Goodall, Shane Ivey, Ross Payton and others)
1:00 PM — Operation Torch (Godlike game with Kevin Pezzano)
2:30 PM — Games on Demand (Benjamin Baugh, Shane Ivey, Ross Payton)
6:00 PM — Armor Soldier! (Wild Talents game with Kevin Pezzano)
6:00 PM — Black Devils Brigade (Godlike game with Allan Goodall)
Midnight — The Kerberos Club (Wild Talents game with Benjamin Baugh)
Midnight — Sucrose Park (Monsters and Other Childish Things game with Ross Payton)
Sunday, 6 September 2009
1:00 PM — The Age of Masks (Wild Talents game with Ross Payton)
1:00 PM — Black Devils Brigade (Godlike game with Allan Goodall)
6:00 PM — The Kerberos Club (Wild Talents game with Benjamin Baugh)
6:00 PM — Operation Torch (Godlike game with Kevin Pezzano)
Midnight — This Favored Land (Wild Talents game with Allan Goodall)
Midnight — Night Shift (Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green game with Ross Payton)
Monday, 7 September 2009
1:00 PM — Operation Torch (Godlike game with Kevin Pezzano)
1:00 PM — The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor (Monsters and Other Childish Things game with Benjamin Baugh)
1:00 PM — This Favored Land (Wild Talents game with Allan Goodall)
1:00 PM — Night Shift (Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green game with Ross Payton)
Registration
Go to the DragonCon website to register for any or all of our games. See you in Atlanta!
Written by Benjamin Baugh (six-time Ennie Award-nominated author of Monsters and Other Childish Things andThe Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor) with illustrations by Todd Shearer (Delta Green: Eyes Only, Grim War, This Favored Land) and Lanny Liu, The Kerberos Club is a thorough treatment of Victorian society in its every particular, especially the incredible and sometimes awful changes that supernatural influences called "the Strangeness" come to wreak on Queen and Country alike. It gives the GM and players every tool they need to play in an era that is at the same time familiar and alien, made more of both by the Strangeness that grips it.
A 320-page softcover book, The Kerberos Club will have a cover price of U.S. $39.99. It was originally offered for pre-order at $24.99, dating back from earlier, much more modest drafts of the book, and the pre-order price of $24.99 remains in effect until July 31, 2009. On August 1, the final cover price will take effect for all subsequent orders.
I hope you enjoy this taste of The Kerberos Club.
Shane Ivey
Arc Dream Publishing
Introduction
As Victoria’s Empire grows larger and more Strange, the well-bred beasts of Science and Industry mate freely with the ill-tempered curs of Occultism and Myth, begetting uncanny marvels that demonstrate the most pernicious mongrel vigor. As Her divinity becomes indisputable, and Her government is shown how to once again properly bow to a true Monarch, the Empire teeters on the brink of chaos. The prosperity brought by Industry and the Might of Her Armies are both transformed by the Strangeness which has touched the world.
In famine-ravaged Ireland the roads to Faerie open and the wonders and horrors of the Otherworld spill out, mingling with man and politics, with magic and Church. But good English will, good English steel and brave English soldiery push into the Lands of Tears and Honey, where the old bones of the Celtic gods are home to their weird kith and kin, arisen from their flesh as it dying became starlight. Through the colony of New Birmingham, Victoria Divinus asserts her Rights and Prerogatives to the Summerlands and the Winterlands, and names as her subjects all the races of the Fae, from the least phooka to the greatest Lord.
Armies are raised against Her, and the gods and powers of old march with their human comrades, but as with the Indian Rebellion, they are smote soundly by Her legions, and the sometimes unsettling weapons of Strange origins they bring to war. Lovelace’s mechanical servants become mechanical riflemen. Albert’s gift of wolf-belts from his native Coberg becomes Her Majesty’s 13th Lupine Rangers. The skies belong to her Aero Navy and its airships carry exploding bombs and fighting-craft perfected from Félix du Temple’s Albatross design.
The pace of change is unsettling, and many have marked that which would have been witchcraft in their father’s age, and would have been deemed impossible just years previous, is now commonplace. No sooner is one innovation or uncanny revelation or Wonder of the Age accepted and become familiar than another arises, more perturbing than the last.
In January of 1860 a man sprouted whirring hummingbird wings and flew from his home in Middlesex to his offices in London as if borne by angels, outpacing the express train on his way. Slowing only to fetch down a kitten from a roof, he arrived at his place of work hardly out of breath. He was lauded in the headlines for a week, then began selling a patent Lifting Tonic promising that the “Seventeen effusions and potent compounds of exotic and mysterious origins” would grant a “lightness of step and mind which if practiced diligently would grant wings of spirit.” But at 5s 5d a bottle it only served to lighten his customers by relieving them of the weight of their silver. By the first of March, he was already defending his reputation in the courts, and fighting prosecution under an obscure Act governing the practice of witchcraft to “cause a public skeptycal in purpose to profet unjustly” — proving that there are few things so wondrous and awe-inspiring that London pragmatism can’t reduce it to its basest element.
In short, the Empire is Touched, and so too are its citizens. The wonders of Science and the horrors of its misuse walk alongside the great mysteries of the elder ages, Oriental religions and cults grow in popularity beneath the veneer of Christian England, and London, always faintly pagan even before the Strangeness, has become something else again.
When Victoria rose to the throne in 1837 the Strange was upon Her already, in small ways, and it was upon her Kingdom as well, though hidden and mostly unknown. By the middle years of Her reign, when her Divinity is revealed by the bleeding wounds in her side and hands during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 — stigmata which only healed when the rebellion was put down — the Strange has entered the public consciousness, and is reported in the news. The lines between Invention, Occultism, God, Monster, Magic, Mesmerism, Science, and Industry become blurred, and there is only the thrumming engine of Progress to which society clings with white-knuckled hands. The Future is Now, and the World is remade daily. There is no shortage of news for London’s dozens of papers. By the end of Victoria's reign the pace of change and the Strange wonders she portended have become oppressive and crushing. It is impossible to bear Her gaze any longer without falling down and weeping, so She remains out of the public eye. She has made pets of Parliament, the Lords are her parakeets, singing whatever tune she wishes, and the House of Commons her beaten cur.
And then there is the Kerberos Club, refuge for the Empire’s monsters and broken heroes, those who have gazed too long into the darkness, and those who have been Touched and remade by the Strange. Early on, the Kerberos Club guards the gates of hell, keeping ordinary folk ignorant of the Strangeness, then as the Strange becomes known, they marshal to confront those weird menaces that are too much for ordinary authorities. In the last years of Her reign the Club is at the height of its power, working against enemies foreign and domestic to bring the full force of its Strange potencies against them: The Three Heads of the Kerberos Club.
The Club welcomes any who’ve been Touched, and early on this egalitarianism is itself more shocking than the rumors of dark dealings, blackmail, pagan practice, sexual perversion, and smoking in the company of women. Within the walls of the Club’s main house on the Square of Saint James, just off Pall Mall, no member is forbidden any access or denied any privilege because of race, creed, class, color, sex, or predilection. This shocking transgression of the natural order of things might seem the hardest of the Club’s many eccentricities to accept, but it only seems this way because one has not yet seen the Blue Chamber or the Atlantis Room, or sat down at table with Doctor Archibald Monroe and heard Darwin’s theories of Speciation and Natural Selection so perfectly and amusingly explained from the lips of a chimpanzee ape. The doctor is quite proud of his waistcoats, which he has tailored by Mertoy and Sons in colors to inspire thoughts of Birds of Paradise, and a compliment will surely win his friendly attention.
The Kerberos Club is where the Strangers come to relax, have a meal, read the paper, and socialize with those who truly understand the burden , the power , and the duty that the Touch of Strangeness imparts. And of course, to engage in the sorts of dilettante meddling by which the Kerberans address some of the Empire’s gravest and subtlest threats.
Special Branch, Victoria’s steely-eyed secret police, despise the Kerberos Club, and would happily see the lot of them banged up in irons and locked in a hole where the sun never shines (assuming the Kerberan in question wouldn’t find that treatment quite delightful). But Victoria dotes on the Kerberos Club, even if She never publicly meets its officers in any official capacity. She likes Her creatures to remain strong and occupied, and some harmless exercise from rivalry can only serve the good of all. When She needs clean, fanatical, reliable, and rigid, her Special Branch will do. But when she needs a Stranger’s abilities or warped perspective — when she needs the insights of a controlled evil to understand a loosed one — then the three-headed dog is the beast she whistles for, if the clever monster isn’t already on the right trail.
There is every good reason for the club’s motto:
“MALUM NECESSARUM.”
How to Use This Book
The Kerberos Club is a setting sourcebook for the Wild Talents roleplaying game. It presents a view of the Victorian period as transformed by Strangeness, the euphemistic expression used to describe every manner of weird and uncanny influence, inspired by the gothic horror, scientific romance and fairy tales of the day, the superhero genres of the modern era, and by the real history of the period made Strange at every step, and growing increasingly so as the century progresses.
This book presents three distinct eras of play, each offering a different style of adventuring. The eras also correspond generally to the Early, Middle, and Late Victorian period, and so each has a slightly different social and political landscape. It is entirely possible to run (and frankly, would be awesome to play) a campaign from one end of the century to the other, encompassing each era and style into a single game.
Early on, the Strangeness is relatively subtle, something people may have heard about but with which most have no direct experience. In the middle, it is breaking out into the public awareness and becoming indistinct from the other wonders of the age. By the late era things have come totally unstuck, and almost nothing is too Strange to be loosed in the world.
In Wild Talents Terms
In terms of Wild Talents’ “Building Superheroic Histories,” the world of the Kerberos Club can be defined like so:
Red (Historical Inertia): 3
Superhuman Strangers can easily change history, but a conceit of the setting is that while many of the details change, the general shape of Victoria’s century remains the same. For example, in 1861 Prince Albert, having become increasingly concerned that Victoria’s transformation is driving her mad, mysteriously vanishes so as to join an occult revolutionary society with its origins in the University of Berlin. In our reality, he dies of typhus.
Gold (Talent Inertia): 3
The superhuman are no different than the merely human in the world of the Kerberos Club. Change comes to some and not to others, and some actively fight against it. But the world itself is changing, and changing dramatically, so elements of Future Shock play into this. Can you change enough to keep up with the changing times? The rate of this acceleration itself increases as the century wears on, and the forces unleashed in the 1840s will not be put away again.
Blue (The Lovely and the Pointless): 2, Then 3, Then 5
The “Blueness” of this world increases as the Strangeness becomes more prevalent.
EARLY. In the early years of Victoria’s reign, things are BLUE 2: The Strangeness exists, and has begun to spread and infect, but it has not yet become common knowledge. What is known is generally considered unseemly, foreign, or the purview of the Great and Good (or the Base and Fallen). In this mode the Kerberos Club operates to keep a lid on these things, to see that they don’t get too out of hand and upset the delicate sensibilities of the growing middle class.
MIDDLE. In the Middle Victorian era things begin to heat up pretty seriously. The setting becomes BLUE 3, and the Strangeness can no longer be ignored. Victoria has shapechangers in Her army, and her heavy cuirassiers wear the Lorica Victoria, bullet-proof armor for rider and horse alike. Now the Kerberos Club contends openly with weird threats and menaces, and things begin to resemble a street-level superhero setting in many ways.
LATE. In the Late Victorian era things unravel, and jump right to BLUE 5 (things are briefly BLUE 4 at the transition point, but they keep changing faster and faster). In this era the Empire is like a top, nearly spun out, wildly gyrating before flying off the table onto the floor. Fleets of airships, the Hollow World explored, dinosaur cavalry, and superhuman adventurers fighting openly. Here the Kerberos Club is like a big public super-team in many respects, and their battles with malevolent Strangers can sometimes level city blocks.
Black (Moral Clarity): 2
The world of the Kerberos Club may get Stranger and Stranger, but it doesn’t get any more morally clear. It’s about hard decisions, and about consequences. In a sense, the British Empire is presented as the “good guys” in this game, in that the Kerberos Club (and its members) for the most part do their particular take on “duty” with regards to Queen and Country. Often, they find themselves forced to make choices between a little evil and a big one, or to make choices with no clear idea where the Good lies. The real history of England saw intense classism, crushing poverty, science in the service of racism, the disenfranchisement of women, sensational crime, and war war war. Add to this the reality of the superhuman. It’s a tough world, and sometimes the only thing you can be is badder than the bad man, more deceitful than the devil, and more poisonous than the snake. At the end of the day, is knowing you did your duty for Queen and Empire enough to let you look your own reflection in the eye?
Who Are the Characters and What Do They Do?
The primary assumption of this book is that players will take on the roles of members of the Kerberos Club, and one major goal in writing it has been to make this prospect as attractive as possible. The Kerberos Club is many things, but within the setting it is the vanguard against the Strangeness which is transforming the world: the Empire’s first and last defense against menaces too weird for ordinary people. As a facilitator to play, it is a perfect excuse for characters of radically different social background and class to mingle and work together as equals, something which can present a problem without this conceit in the context of the Victorian social order.
The Kerberos Club is a refuge for the Strange. It counts among its members Indian mystics, fallen women, gentleman adventurers, occultists, and those who meddle with the outward limits of what is scientifically possible, seeking to transgress those limits at any cost. All its members have been Touched. As Kerberans, the player characters stand somewhere at the nexus of Hero and Monster, and as the Club becomes more public knowledge, they are equally lauded and despised. They possess unnatural abilities which defy reason and a perspective which defies morality. They cast a lurid glow that casts the period’s social landscape in sharp relief.Within the walls of the Club’s London house all are equal and treated as such (and those who can’t adapt to this don’t long last on the Club’s rolls), but outside the walls, they find themselves thrown back into the same struggles, preconceptions, and expectations as everyone else, and subject to the mistrust and resentment of ordinary folk who envy and fear their freedom. In this way, they are both within and without proper Victorian society, subjects of admiration and envy, sometimes revulsion, but always fascination. And as much as Society would wish it were not so, the Kerberos Club is needed.
What characters do is as complex as who they are. The pursuit of personal agendas is entirely acceptable. A detective may consult on cases unrelated to the Club’s business, and a physician may seek cures for weird diseases. An inventor invents, an explorer explorers, a woman fallen to vice, free thinking and the study of the occult has plenty to occupy her time. But if one visits the Kerberos Club’s house often enough, one will inevitably be asked to look into certain things, handle certain business, have a word with this person or that. The Kerberos Club’s officers (whoever they might be) never assign jobs or duties; rather all members are obliged to look favorably upon the humble requests for assistance made by their fellows. Likewise, the characters have this same privilege of asking for assistance, information, and specialized services from other members.
The currency of the Club is favors done and favors owed, and though there is no official tally, most members are scrupulous about keeping track of who they owe and who owes them. Offers of assistance, if accepted, are indebting as well. The Club’s grand tradition of meddling in affairs which don’t concern it sees Kerberans on the trail of many menaces and threats even before an official request for aid comes down the convoluted channels separating the Club from the Queen. Such requests follow a path like Louis Pasteur’s torturously twisted glass tubing, which keeps wandering microbes from inoculating his broth while still allowing air to pass through. Communication without contamination.
Victoria’s Empire is under assault constantly from all quarters. In Ireland the Fae grow restless with the Queen’s rule, and their discontent with Her rulership mirrors that of the Irish people. In India, the legion of native gods and demons and divinities, asleep for ages, has begun stirring again, seeking new epic stories to play out upon the societies of man. In Europe, France and Prussia clash, and beyond them, Russia grows increasingly aware of its might. In the Americas, the broken Union is heading to war. Spies, anarchists, criminals petty and grand, Faerie contagion, industrial transformation, blasphemous science run amok, strife within the Church over the Queen’s apparent divinity, and all the mundane evils of poverty and desperation and injustice push the Empire to the boiling point. Assailed from without by enemies on four continents, corrupted from within by Progress run mad, it is held together only by the increasingly inhuman will of Queen Victoria Divinus.
The Kerberos Club has plenty to contend with.
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Travel Passes
The American Civil War was a unique affair, fought between literate people of largely the same ethnic make up, over political arguments that only partially mapped to geography. Telling friend from foe when not in uniform was incredibly difficult. Nevertheless, both the North and the South saw the necessity of restricting the movement of its citizens lest freedom of movement gave aid to spies, saboteurs and smugglers. This was made even more difficult by the fact that the United States' was founded on liberty, with certain rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution.
Freedom of movement was not restricted until the front lines had defined themselves after the battles of Bull Run in Virginia and Wilson's Creek in Missouri. Up until then, both sides figured the conflict would be a short, sharp affair with the rebellion crushed or secession succeeding by Christmas of 1861. The rich and powerful in Washington travelled to Manassas, Virginia to view the first major battle of the war as it unfolded (and helped clog the roads when the Union army routed). Prior to that, officers moved freely from any point in the North to the Southern states as they resigned their commissions in order to join secessionist forces. No attempt was made to stop this flow of trained military personnel, or the important information about troop buildups and fortifications they took with them.
As the front lines formed, both sides saw the danger in unrestricted movement across the border, and both sides responded in the same way. In order to travel across the border, citizens needed travel passes, or "passports".
A travel pass was a document signed by an official, usually the local provost-marshal. It was an officially printed document with the name of the person to whom the pass was granted handwritten in the appropriate place. The document declared the purpose of the trip and where the person was allowed to travel. These were presented for viewing to train conductors and to any military pickets that the person might come across. Confederate travel passes were printed on the cheap, locally produced brown paper that was in common usage due to shortages.
Passes were required by regular citizens who needed to cross the lines from North to South, or from South to North, in order to show that they were not spies or smugglers. Travel passes were also given to soldiers discharged from the army, captured soldiers who were paroled, and soldiers on leave (furlough), so that they would not be picked up as deserters.
Travel Passes and the Union
The Union required a pass to travel into the South as of August 19,1861. At the same time, U.S. citizens required a passport to travel out of the country. Bureaucratically, the passes were the responsibility of the State Department, until the War Department took them over after March 17, 1862. At that point, it was no longer a requirement that citizens needed a passport to leave the country. They, of course, still needed a pass to travel into the South.
It wasn't until 1863 that the Union required a travel pass for someone to enter the Union from the South. Indeed, escaped slaves and free blacks who managed to avoid Confederate patrols slipped across the border with little fanfare. Until 1863, so, too, did Confederate spies.
Except for passes given to soldiers on leave or upon discharge, etc., the Union didn't require travel passes within its own boundaries. This was true even after the Union initiated the draft.
Passports were required of foreigners travelling into the U.S. Foreigners who declared their intention to become naturalized Americans could obtain a U.S. passport from March 3, 1863 until the act of Congress was repealed on May 30, 1866.
Here is an example of a pass issued to a paroled Confederate soldier by the Union provost-marshal in Richmond, Virginia on April 20, 1865: http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/847#
Able bodied men travelling near the army might be detained on presumption of desertion. Certificates were issued to show that the gentleman was not fit for service, or had paid a substitute to serve in his stead if he was drafted.
Here is an example of a certificate signed by a substitute (Phillip Seibert) who agrees to fight for another man for payment of $300: http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlejohnc
This is a certificate issued for Albert Roxbury, stating that he is not eligible to fight. The certificate has a place to fill in the state where it was issued and the reason Roxbury is able to get out of conscription. In this case, it is because Roxbury provided a substitute (click on the image to see a larger version): http://www.memorialhall.mass.edu/collect
Travel Passes and the Confederacy
The Confederacy required travel passes between the North and the South at about the same time as the Union.
On April 16, 1862 the Confederacy passed the first Conscription Act, requiring that all men aged 18 to 35 join the army, and those already serving for a one year enlistment period had to continue to serve until the end of hostilities. At that point, the Confederacy required travel passes for anyone travelling throughout the South on railroads. According to Confederate secretary of war James Seddon, this was to stop "the passage of dangerous or disaffected persons". In other words, it was deemed necessary to limit the movements of deserters and draft dodgers, with the hoped for benefit of stopping spies and smugglers. The Confederacy did not require passes for travelling on foot, or by private conveyance (horse, carriage, etc.).
Southerners didn't take kindly to the travel pass system. It reminded them too much of a similar system used by slaves travelling for their masters. They also saw it as needless bureaucracy that reduced liberty while removing able-bodied men from the front lines. They generally despised conscription and figured that men who would only fight through conscription were useless soldiers anyway. Regardless, there was little pressure to do away with the travel pass system.
Like the North, the Confederacy required passports for foreigners entering the country.
Here is an example of a brown-paper Confederate travel pass. This one was issued to Mrs. E. P. Jerroll, Mrs. S. C. Reid, and Mrs. J. S. Simons allowing them to travel to Columbus, Georgia. The document was issued April 30, 1864 by Captain M. P. Parker, the Augusta, Georgia Provost-Marshal: http://www2.gcsu.edu/library/sc/images/s
As in the North, able-bodied men near an army were likely to be considered deserters or draft dodgers. In the Confederacy — due to severe manpower shortages — there was a greater likelihood that a man would be detained if he couldn't prove why he wasn't in uniform. Like the Union, though, the Confederacy had exemptions from the draft which required the issuing of certificates of exemption.
There was a so-called "twenty negro law" where a man with 20 slaves was exempt from serving. Later, this was reduced to 15 slaves. There were strategic professions which were considered as important to the Confederacy as fighting. And, of course, men could be exempt due to physical or mental disabilities, though it was not uncommon for these to be ignored. Communities could petition to have someone exempt, if they felt that the person was needed for the well being of the community. Eventually it became harder to get exemptions, as the Second Conscription Act (September 27, 1862) extended the age range to 18 to 45, and the Third Conscription Act (February 17, 1864) further extended the age range to 17 to 50.
Regardless, men could still be exempt from service. Foreigners serving in the army, for instance, were not subject to conscription. This may seem odd, that a foreigner who volunteered for the Confederate army could leave the army when his enlistment was up while his Confederate-born comrades could not. It was widely speculated that the government had to exempt foreigners in order to provide a pool of men from which the rich could obtain substitutes.
Confederates had a special problem when they were paroled or discharged from the army. As the war progressed, more and more Confederate territory fell to the Union. Discharge papers — which acted as their own travel pass — were necessary to cross the lines into Union-held territory in order to go home. Such was the case of William Watson, a Scotsman serving in the 3rd Louisiana Infantry. After one year in the army, Watson returned to his home in New Orleans, which required him to present his papers to the Union provost-marshal in Baton Rouge. Without the papers, he was subject to arrest as a potential spy.
This is an example of a certificate of exemption issued in the state of Texas on December 27, 1862. It was issued for John Vogle, a 38 year old wagon maker (an exempt profession): http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/civi
The Provost-Marshal
While travel passes could be issued by high-ranking army officers (generals, usually, or their staff), and by state governors, most passports were issued by a provost-marshal.
The provost-marshal was a military officer whose duties spanned those of a morale and discipline officer, a chief-of-police chief, and a magistrate. The provost-marshal was responsible for preventing straggling, rounding up deserters (from both his army and the opposing army), and for detaining prisoners-of-war, but his sphere of influence also extended into the civilian arena. The suppression of looting fell to the provost-marshal. So, too, did the control of civilian establishments in the vicinity of an army that might hurt discipline and troop effectiveness (i.e. hotels, saloons, and brothels). What today would be considered counter-insurgency duties were the responsibility of the provost-marshal: he was allowed to conduct searches and seizures of private residences, arrest those accused of spying, and curtail movement by issuing travel passes to citizens. He was also the official to whom citizens bore their complaints.
Every army had a provost-marshal. So, too, did military departments and military districts (the temporary regions the country was carved into during the war). Troops — often under-manned regiments — were assigned to work under the provost-marshal as the "provost guard".
To receive a travel permit, a petition had to be mailed to the local provost-marshal or presented to the provost-marshal's office in person. At Petersburg, Virginia, for instance, a provost-marshal office was set up at the train station to handle the issuance of travel passes for passengers changing trains.
There was very little transparency in the issuing of cross-the-lines travel passes. Neither the Union nor the Confederacy issued guidelines as to who was considered "dangerous" and should not receive a pass, and who was considered "safe". Furthermore, it was left up to the discretion of the local officials as to who should receive a pass and under what conditions. Some officials required petitioners to take an oath of allegiance, while others did not. Some officials carefully poured over every petition, while others were mere rubber stamps.
Still others were willing to hand out travel passes for the right price. Such was the case of Brigadier General John Henry Winder, the provost-marshal of Richmond, Virginia. While he was the chief counter-intelligence officer in arguably the Confederacy's most important city, he was notoriously corrupt. Anyone could get a travel pass for the sum of $100, regardless of their character. One Union spy received a travel pass after purchasing a new uniform for Winder. Winder employed rowdy and unsavory men to do his bidding. It was said that his offices were "repulsive by the smell of whiskey".
Few Confederate travel pass applications survived the war and the burning of Richmond, but a good sample of Northern petitions survived. Most of the people applying for cross-border passes were women intent on seeing family members in Southern states. The typical petition included a declaration of the woman's loyalty to the Union, often accompanied with a written character reference. This was even the case when the woman was trying to travel South to join up with her husband, though the petition didn't explain why the husband was now residing in the Confederacy. Other petitioners needed to cross the border to seek medical attention, search for missing family, or to retrieve the bodies of a dead relative.
It was trivially easy to obtain a pass for Inter-state and intra-state travel within the Confederacy. All one had to do was apply in person at the provost-marshal's office. Unless there was an obvious reason to suspect the petitioner was a spy, the worst that could happen was the petitioner would be denied. Even if someone didn't have a pass when asked to present one by a conductor, the punishment was simple removal from the train. If the person was without their pass while the train was in motion, they would be removed at the next stop.
The men who enforced the regulations were often self-serving with an inflated sense of importance. Texas senator Williamson S. Oldham relates a story about a trip home to Texas from Richmond. While changing trains at Mobile, Alabama a lieutenant almost refused him access to the train. Oldham had refused to dump an arm load of blankets and cloaks on the platform in order to produce his pass at the lieutenant's immediate request. Soon after, the lieutenant refused to let an old man — a Mr. Conrad, a congressman from Louisiana — board the same train. Mr. Conrad had a pass from Brig. Gen. Winder in Richmond, but the lieutenant forced him to obtain another pass from the local provost-marshal.
Travel Documentation and Game Play
The travel pass is a versatile GM tool. It's not needed for military adventures — a soldier's written orders serves that purpose. For civilian and spy adventures, it can be anything from a major plot complication to a minor detail that's hand waved away. PCs can get them easily, or their reputations can make them all but impossible to obtain. Even if they have a pass, they are at the mercy of the soldiers who enforce the rules. The PCs could easily find themselves thrown off a train in a remote, hostile town at a moment's notice, or they could arrive at their intended destination without incident.
Things get more serious when it comes to avoiding conscription. Do the PCs have the paperwork exempting them from the draft? Maybe they meet a local provost-marshal who's behind in his quota of new soldiers. He might grab them and drag them to the nearest army assembly depot with or without documentation. Truly unscrupulous patrols looking for shirkers and deserters could snatch, and destroy, exemption certificates, shoot any troublemakers, and slap the rest into leg irons.
This is an era without centralized databases, and with a chaotic bureaucracy. The GM has a lot of leeway as to how easy or how difficult it is for antagonists to check the PCs' credentials. The closer they get to a war zone, the more they're going to need an official document, or a Gift-enhanced substitute.
References
Jewett, Clayton E., and Oldham, Williamson S., Rise And Fall of the Confederacy: The Memoir of Senator Williamson S. Oldham, CSA (University of Missouri Press)
Taylor, Amy M., The Divided Family in Civil War America (UNC Press)
The Editors of Time-Life Books, Spies, Scouts and Raiders: Irregular Operations, part of the Time-Life Books "The Civil War" series
(Time Incorporated)
Various, The Photographic History of the Civil War, Volume IV (The Blue and Grey Press)
Watson, William, Life in the Confederate Army (Louisiana State University Press)
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Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green
Delta Green: The Night Shift - A-Cell has assigned your team to protect a vital site in the interests of national security: The largest indoor retail facility in North America. Your tactical response team trains with the best gear money can buy, but to what end? Tonight you'll find out... Featuring new rules for combat from the upcoming source book Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity.
Start Time: 8/13/2009 16:00
GM: Ross Payton
Event ID: RPG0906123
Delta Green: Black Cod Island - A Miskatonic University biology researcher has disappeared, and clues point to a bucolic Haita island in the Pacific Northwest. Can your agents, under cover and without official sanction, find the truth and bring the victim - and themselves - back alive?
Start Time: 8/14/2009 14:00
GM: Shane Ivey
Event ID: RPG0906129
Delta Green: The Night Shift - A-Cell has assigned your team to protect a vital site in the interests of national security: The largest indoor retail facility in North America. Your tactical response team trains with the best gear money can buy, but to what end? Tonight you'll find out... Featuring new rules for combat from the upcoming source book Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity.
Start Time: 8/15/2009 10:00
GM: Ross Payton
Event ID: RPG0906124
eCollapse
eCollapse: CorteZoneShot - What is the world's last media mogul hiding in her Everglades swamp property? Four of her enemies want to find out. Armed only with their wits, their grudges, their black-market biotech implants, and a bullwhip soaked in gasoline, they're determined to get answers. Or, if they don't get answers, at least get some revenge. A game in the eCollapse setting.
Start Time: 8/13/2009 12:00
GM: Greg Stolze
Event ID: RPG0906130
Note: The Game is listed as using 2nd Edition Wild Talents as the game system.
Kill Doctor F-Bomb - Dr. Francis Zuckerman is a scumbag. A handsome scumbag. A rich, successful scumbag who is poised to become mayor, unless he's stopped by the enemies he's left penniless, disgraced, heartbroken, and seething for payback. Reborn as "The Surgical Strikers," crime has a new enemy! At least, Francis Zuckerman's crimes do. An eCollapse game using a new system!
Start Time: 8/14/2009 12:00
GM: Greg Stolze
Event ID: RPG0906131
Note: The game is listed as using the Smear of Destiny system.
Godlike
The Black Devils Brigade: Daring To Die - December, 1943: Elements of two divisions failed to wrest Hill 960 from the Germans. In their first real combat mission, the job of taking Monte la Difensa now falls to the joint American-Canadian First Special Service Force. Can this elite unit - spearheaded by the men of the Talent Section - do the impossible and succeed where so many others have failed?
Start Time: 8/13/2009 10:00
GM: Allan Goodall
Event ID: RPG0906119
Note: This is currently listed as Wild Talents. It is actually Godlike.
Operation Torch - November 1942: The Allies are landing on North Africa! Every sign indicates that this landing ought to go smoothly as long as French forces don't put up a fight - and as long as there are no German Talents around... This scenario is a preview of the upcoming campaign book "Operation Torch."
Start Time: 8/13/2009 12:00
GM: Kevin Pezzano
Event ID: RPG0906136
The Black Devils Brigade: Repeat Performance - January, 1944: The American-Canadian First Special Service Force are relieved from their successful attack on Monte Majo, only to learn that their relief force has lost the mountain. The Force must, again, take the last hill blocking the Allies from Liri Valley and a drive on Rome.
Start Time: 8/14/2009 10:00
GM: Allan Goodall
Event ID: RPG0906120
Operation Torch - November 1942: The Allies are landing on North Africa! Every sign indicates that this landing ought to go smoothly as long as French forces don't put up a fight - and as long as there are no German Talents around... This scenario is a preview of the upcoming campaign book "Operation Torch."
Start Time: 8/14/2009 10:00
GM: Kevin Pezzano
Event ID: RPG0906137
Operation Torch - November 1942: The Allies are landing on North Africa! Every sign indicates that this landing ought to go smoothly as long as French forces don't put up a fight - and as long as there are no German Talents around... This scenario is a preview of the upcoming campaign book "Operation Torch."
Start Time: 8/15/2009 10:00
GM: Kevin Pezzano
Event ID: RPG0906138
Leviathan
A Bad Day at Saint Pantyhose - For the nurses and doctors at Saint Abadios' Memorial Hospital in Chicago, days are rarely good. ODs and gunshots are their bread and butter, and the Friday after a big Bulls win is always hectic. But though they're prepared for the occasional madman or mystery disease, this Friday 'Saint Pantyhose' is going to face a national nightmare. Can the E.R. team hack it?
Start Time: 8/15/2009 12:00
GM: Greg Stolze
Event ID: RPG0906132
Note: The game system is listed as "One Roll Engine (Leviathan).
Monsters And Other Childish Things
Sky Maul - Most times, it's a blast when you're a kid with a super-powerful monster for a best friend. But being stuck on a plane on a field trip out of the state is not most times. When weird trouble crops up at 30,000 feet, can you and your monster save the day without getting in even worse trouble with teachers and parents?
Start Time: 8/13/2009 14:00
GM: Shane Ivey
Event ID: RPG0906128
Pastoral Manor - The perfect rural retreat, a happy farm and pastoral paradise. But beneath this shining exterior lies a seething underworld of scheming and malevolent talking animals. Every animal that lives more than a year on the farm's land becomes intelligent. Many of them want to revolt against the cruel Lord of the Manor while others seek to oppress their fellows. Viva La Revolution!
Start Time: 8/14/2009 10:00
GM: Ross Payton
Event ID: RPG0906121
The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor - The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor sees doleful foundlings with murky pasts in a great, dreary orphanage filled with dangerous truths. Players together face the monstrous dangers of their new home and uncover their own forgotten secrets. Can you learn the truth of your own sad history? And can you make friends with the monster at the bottom of the well? How about the one in the rickety old mill? Or the one...
Start Time: 8/15/2009 16:00
GM: Ross Payton
Event ID: RPG0906125
Sucrose Park - Designed as the ultimate daycare center, Sucrose Park looks after hundreds of kids while their parents gamble away their college tuition in nearby casinos. A corporate wonderland of rides, ball pits, arcades and costumed mascots from popular cartoons await. Too bad the owner of the park never wants anyone to leave. Ever. All the neon lights and laser tag arenas can't hide the fact that Sucrose Park is a prison. It's time to break out.
Start Time: 8/16/2009 10:00
GM: Shane Ivey
Event ID: RPG0906122
Wild Talents
The Age of Masks - You want to be a superhero? No such thing. But you can be a mask, which is why you're here. The difference? Superheroes didn't choose to be what they turned out to be. They made the best with what they had. That's why they died off. Masks want to be masks. Need to be. Being a mask is the greatest high known to man. The governments passed those crackdown laws, but the call of the mask is still strong. Strong enough to call you. Let's get started.
Start Time: 8/14/2009 16:00
GM: Ross Payton
Event ID: RPG0906126
Armor Soldier! - The mecha pilots of the EuroRussian Union are used to turning captured technology against their enemies in the Asian Federation. It's no surprise that when they discover a massive creature inside a wrecked alien starship, they find a way to bring it and its incredible powers under control. But when its alien masters come searching for their lost ship, will humanity put aside its own wars long enough to face them?
Start Time: 8/14/2009 16:00
GM: Kevin Pezzano
Event ID: RPG0906133
This Favored Land: Horror at Spangler's Spring - The Battle of Gettysburg is into its second day, and something terrible is happening to the wounded men near Spangler's Spring. It's up to the PCs to investigate and stop the horror. Superhero role playing during the War Between the States.
Start Time: 8/14/2009 18:00
GM: Allan Goodall
Event ID: RPG0906115
Target: Planet Earth! - As an alien invader, you must observe the hairless apes and analyze their weaknesses. But it's not easy avoiding nosy neighbors, snooping reporters, and the ominous Persons in Brown. And what's with the weird lights coming from the abandoned bubblegum factory at the edge of town? Target: Planet Earth! A game of alien invasion and futile resistance.
Start Time: 8/15/2009 10:00
GM: Allan Goodall
Event ID: RPG0906116
The Missing - In a world gone mad, Talents are the ultimate activists, men and women dedicated to fighting the Power with superpowers. As you set out to uncover corruption in the well-defended heart of a massive multinational organization, can you be sure there's no treachery in your own team? "The Missing" is a modern-day adventure for new and veteran players alike.
Start Time: 8/15/2009 14:00
GM: Shane Ivey
Event ID: RPG0906127
Armor Soldier! - The mecha pilots of the EuroRussian Union are used to turning captured technology against their enemies in the Asian Federation. It's no surprise that when they discover a massive creature inside a wrecked alien starship, they find a way to bring it and its incredible powers under control. But when its alien masters come searching for their lost ship, will humanity put aside its own wars long enough to face them?
Start Time: 8/15/2009 16:00
GM: Kevin Pezzano
Event ID: RPG0906134
This Favored Land: Crescent City Crescendo - In Yankee-occupied New Orleans, the players must stop a bomb plot that threatens to shatter the fragile peace. Superhero role playing during the War Between the States.
Start Time: 8/15/2009 16:00
GM: Allan Goodall
Event ID: RPG0906117
Armor Soldier! - The mecha pilots of the EuroRussian Union are used to turning captured technology against their enemies in the Asian Federation. It's no surprise that when they discover a massive creature inside a wrecked alien starship, they find a way to bring it and its incredible powers under control. But when its alien masters come searching for their lost ship, will humanity put aside its own wars long enough to face them?
Start Time: 8/16/2009 10:00
GM: Kevin Pezzano
Event ID: RPG0906135
This Favored Land: Deserters - Early spring, 1863. A unique band of superpowered soldiers - half Yankee, half Rebel - desert from their units to hunt a dangerous common enemy in Tennessee's Smokey Mountains. Not long ago they were enemies, but now they must unite in pursuit of justice and vengeance. Superhero role playing during the War Between the States.
Start Time: 8/16/2009 10:00
GM: Allan Goodall
Event ID: RPG0906118
Arc Dream Event Grid
A list of the Arc Dream events, by date and time.
Thurs. Aug. 13, 10:00 - Godlike - The Black Devils Brigade: Daring to Die
Thurs. Aug. 13, 12:00 - eCollapse - CorteZoneShot
Thurs. Aug. 13, 12:00 - Godlike - Operation Torch
Thurs. Aug. 13, 14:00 - Monsters and Other Childish Things - Sky Maul
Thurs. Aug. 13, 16:00 - Delta Green - The Night Shift
Fri. Aug. 14, 10:00 - Godlike - The Black Devils Brigade: Repeat Performance
Fri. Aug. 14, 10:00 - Godlike - Operation Torch
Fri. Aug. 14, 10:00 - Monsters and Other Childish Things - Pastoral Manor
Fri. Aug. 14, 12:00 - Smear of Destiny - Kill Doctor F-Bomb
Fri. Aug. 14, 14:00 - Delta Green - Black Cod Island
Fri. Aug. 14, 16:00 - Wild Talents - The Age of Masks
Fri. Aug. 14, 16:00 - Wild Talents: Armor Soldier! - Armor Soldier!
Fri. Aug. 14, 18:00 - Wild Talents: This Favored Land - Horror at Spangler's Spring
Sat. Aug. 15, 10:00 - Delta Green - The Night Shift
Sat. Aug. 15, 10:00 - Godlike - Operation Torch
Sat. Aug. 15, 10:00 - Wild Talents - Target: Planet Earth!
Sat. Aug. 15, 12:00 - Leviathan - A Bad Day at Saint Pantyhose
Sat. Aug. 15, 14:00 - Wild Talents - The Missing
Sat. Aug. 15, 16:00 - Monsters and Other Childish Things: The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor - The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor
Sat. Aug. 15, 16:00 - Wild Talents: Armor Soldier! - Armor Soldier!
Sat. Aug. 15, 16:00 - Wild Talents: This Favored Land - Crescent City Crescendo
Sun. Aug. 16, 10:00 - Monsters and Other Childish Things - Sucrose Park
Sun. Aug. 16, 10:00 - Wild Talents: Armor Soldier! - Armor Soldier!
Sun. Aug. 16, 10:00 - Wild Talents: This Favored Land - Deserters
Willpower Rewards in Godlike and Wild Talents
Willpower is a crucial currency in both Godlike and Wild Talents. In Godlike, where it’s simply called Will, you earn it most often for defeating enemy Talents and for saving your allies’ lives. In Wild Talents it is fueled by motivations, the Loyalties and Passions that define each character. In both games Willpower reflects morale and characters’ ability to persevere despite obstacles and threats. The GM awards it when a character achieves critical goals. The amount of the award depends on the scope of the achievement.
The standard Willpower award for a significant accomplishment in the game is one point: You get a point of Willpower for a single act of heroic risk that succeeds, or for spectacular performance under stress (in other words, rolling a set at height 10 with normal dice).
For a more substantial achievement, a couple of new guidelines might be useful.
First, award a number of Willpower points based on how substantially the achievement supports one of your motivations—its SIGNIFICANCE.
If the achievement lasts beyond the current round, award bonus Willpower points for PERSISTENCE.
If the achievement benefits a large number of characters, award bonus Willpower points for SCOPE.
Awards for Significance
1 Willpower: A minor but direct benefit or advantage to one of your motivations.
2 to 3 Willpower: A moderate benefit or advantage to one of your motivations.
4 to 5 Willpower: A major benefit or advantage to one of your motivations.
Awards for Persistence
+0 Willpower: Immediate benefit—the current scene.
+1 Willpower: Short-term benefit—the current game session.
+2 Willpower: Long-term benefit—multiple game sessions.
+3 Willpower: Permanent benefit—it will last until other events change it.
Awards for Scope
+0 Willpower: It benefits only you or a small group of characters.
+1 Willpower: It benefits a town or organization.
+2 Willpower: It benefits a city or a large organization.
+3 Willpower: It benefits an entire country or civilization.
Willpower Penalties
Just as you can earn Willpower by fulfilling your motivations, you can lose it—sometimes a lot of it—by failing one of your motivations. A catastrophic failure calls for a Trauma Check in Wild Talents, or a Cool + Mental Stability roll in Godlike. That’s what you get when you try to save a buddy’s life but he gets blown away in your arms, or when terrorists launch a devastating strike on the hometown where you’ve invested a chunk of your Base Will as a motivation.
If the disaster is not quite that disastrous, take another look at the Significance, Scope and Persistence numbers. But this time they add up to a penalty. An event of moderate (2 or 3 Willpower), long-term (+2), city-wide (+2) detriment to your motivation might cost you 6 or 7 points of Willpower.
In Wild Talents settings such as Grim War, Willpower comes in very, very handy. Just ask Green Crush.
Just a note: we’re busting ass on Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity. We’re working hard to make it as good as Eyes Only.
There is a TON of content in this book. We’re in the layout and art phase, all writing is done. The Cult of Transcendence is HUGE (212 pages in manuscript form) and the others don’t trail by much. In any case, this will be a honking book.
Everyone trust me, we’re working like warhorses to get this book out.
Here’s what the table of contents is shaping up to look like:
-Black Cod Island
-The Disciples of the Worm
-The DeMonte Clan
-M-EPIC
-The Cult of Transcendence
-Appendices:
--Agent Background Options
--Combat Options
--Stress Disorders
--DNA Analysis
--Running Delta Green Investigations
Here’s a preview of the DeMonte Ghoul Clan; yet another significant threat for DG.
The DeMonte Clan
By Adam Scott Glancy
New Orleans. N’awlins. The Big Easy. For nearly three centuries the Crescent City has curled in a bend in the Mississippi river, surrounded by bayous, swamps and marshes. Over those years the city has flown the flag of every power in North America; the French, the Spanish, the English, the Confederacy and the United States of America, and not once has the city been destroyed by war. When cotton was king, the white gold flowed out of New Orleans by the ton to fill insatiable appetite of Europe’s textile mills. The rich families of New Orleans siphoned off the cotton trade, growing fat like leeches, but they are not the only ones who have grown fat of the fortunes of the city. There are others.
And where the patrician planter families grew fat on the city’s good fortune, there is one family, the DeMonte Family, which has grown fat on the city’s ill fortune. The DeMontes came to New Orleans just after the Haitian slave rebellion, fleeing the machetes and night raids. The DeMontes were among the New Orleans’ richest inhabitants, and also the least conspicuous. And where others have figuratively fed on the fat of the city, the DeMonte clan’s feedings have been of a far more literal character.
Cultes Des Ghoules
Francois Honore-Balfour, the Comte D’Erlette was the wrong choice for recruitment into the Paris Ghoul Cult. He did possess many of the qualities the cult members were looking for: wealth, position, a depraved and perverse nature, and a sociopathic level of selfishness. Unfortunately, the Comte was also an exhibitionist who could not truly enjoy his perversions and obscenities unless he could force others to witness them. Hence, he penned his infamous book Cultes des Ghoules in the year 1703, and distributed it through underground channels across France.
The result of this incredible act of psychotic conspicuousness was that the French authorities cracked down on the cult in a series of raids across the country. The arrests and trials would have scandalized French society from the aristocracy to the landless peasants had not the French King, Louis XIV, the Sun King, acted in secret.
The hundreds arrested were tried and sentenced by secret courts and incarcerated in prisons and madhouses, often under false names. Some of those arrested were so inhuman that they were not deemed suitable for treatment by the courts, but were instead disposed of as one might deal with a dangerous animal. The backlash against the cult was so intense that the power of the Paris Ghoul Cult was broken forever. However, not every member of the cult was brought to justice. Some of them crawled back under Saint Innocents Cemetery or into the catacombs under Paris. Some fled to neighboring nations, particularly to Bavaria and the Netherlands, but for some of the more prominent members of the cult, Europe was too hot.
In order to hide, they were going to have to flee to a more remote location. In the case of the DeMonte family, that meant a journey to the New World...
- Location:Vancouver, BC
Here are the missing timeline events (special thanks to Jason Gallagher for finding it):
June 28, 1860
Southern Democrats hold their own convention in Richmond, Virginia and choose current Vice President John Cabell Breckinridge as their presidential nominee.
November 6, 1860
After a contentious election campaign, Abraham Lincoln is elected President of the United States. Lincoln was not on the ballot in most Southern states, but he captures 60% of the Northern vote. Southern politicians condemn Lincoln as an abolitionist, and speak openly of secession.
December 20, 1860
Delegates to a convention in South Carolina vote unanimously for secession from the Union.
December 24, 1860
The South Carolina ordinance of secession is issued, creating the Republic of South Carolina. The specific reason for leaving the Union is listed as the failure of some states to enforce the Fugitive Slaves Act. The Declaration is not in favor of states rights and opposes the rights of states to pass laws making slavery illegal.
That's one way to play This Favored Land, but it's not the only way. What if you want to have Captain Confederacy battle the Union Talent Terrible Swift Sword over the battlefield at Gettysburg? Chapter 7 touches on alternative play styles — a more "open" approach to 19th Century super powers — without going into a lot of detail. So lets take a closer look at the idea of wide open superheroics during the American Civil War.
What does it mean to make super powers more "open"? At its most basic, it means giving the characters access to a wide range of miracles without requiring particular flaws to protect the integrity of the universe. Going a step further, it means playing in a universe where the characters are open with their powers, where they can flaunt their Gift.
There are three important aspects to consider when making a game of This Favored Land more "open":
- What, if any, limitations are placed on the choice of super powers or how they work?
- How will open use of powers affect North American society?
- How will open powers affect the course of the American Civil War (or other conflicts in the same period)?
Miracle Choice and Functionality
The choice of normal, restricted, and unavailable miracles in This Favored Land was deliberate. The list was created with the concept that The Gift was subtle enough that 21st Century readers of history never noticed it. At the same time, players like doing cool, impossible stuff when they play a super hero game. So, instead of just limiting players to mental or hard to detect abilities (which, actually, was considered early on), players can do some impossible things, they just have to pay a steep Willpower penalty for it. The truly physics-shattering stuff — like shrinking to the size of an ant, or growing into a 50 foot collossus — is in the unavailable list.
If you are running a more open game, you don't have to restrict the players' choice of miracles. Likewise, you don't have to require Willpower Cost or Direct Feed on particular miracles. For that matter, you don't have to require the use of Willpower at all. I recommend Willpower because it's a cool mechanic, but not everyone wants to bother with the bookkeeping it requires.
The limitations, or lack thereof, that you place on miracles will have a direct effect on the next two aspects of your game.
Society's Reaction to The Gift
This Favored Land assumes that if The Gift was ever made common knowledge, it would tear the fabric of 19th Century North American society apart. Or, rather, The Gifted believe that it would tear society apart. Whether it would or not depends a lot on your personal take on human psychology and sociology.
There's no way to tell just what would happen, of course, but history does provide us with some clues. People of the 19th Century were caught between superstition and the popularization of science and technology. The 19th Century saw a greater pace of technological change than any other era before it. At the same time, science was still lacking in a number of key areas. Few sophisticated Americans believed illness came from demonic possession, but they didn't know where disease did come from. It wasn't until the late 1850s that they discovered cholera was tied to particular water sources. Germ theory was in its infancy. The best guess for Yellow Fever had it coming from "vapors" (after all, Yellow Fever struck most frequently in hot, swampy locations).
While science was on the threshold of a number of important discoveries, the people of North America were deeply spiritual. Antebellum Americans lived during the 2nd Great Awakening — a period of religious revival and evangelism that lasted from the 1790s to the 1840s. A belief in a superior being and/or the afterlife was almost universal, with athiesm confined to the intelligensia. As mentioned in This Favored Land, this was also the period that gave birth to Spiritualism.
Between religion and science lay some pretty strange, and troubling, beliefs. Astrology was largely dismissed not because it was silly or a sham, but because it was pagan. "Scientists" tried to determine a man's character through bumps on his head or the shape of his face. Women were relegated to the status of the "fairer sex" because men were better at physical pursuits like running and lifting. And then there was the rampant, universal racism that permeated every society in the world.
How would the open use of super powers affect such a society? Fortunately, this is a game universe and not a sociology thesis. You don't have to be "realistic", and who can really say what's "realistic", anyway?
The easiest solution is to handle it the same way comic books handled it in 1960s society: just have society readily accept super powers. Oh, sure, they're would be a period of utter shock, but eventually the sight of Captain Confederacy flying down the roads of Richmond, Virginia would elicit nothing more than a whoop of support and a "give 'em Hell, Captain" from the masses.
That's easiest path, but maybe not the most rewarding. A more nuanced approach, though, soon leads to messy complications. Of course, complications are the backbone of engaging plot lines.
If you decide to go with something more complicated, you will have to decide how religion and racism are affected by The Gift. This is already mentioned in This Favored Land as reasons for The Gift being hidden. If you unhide The Gift, as the GM you will have to decide if The Gifted in This Favored Land "as written" were right or wrong to fear exposure.
You have a good deal of flexibility with religious attitudes toward The Gift. If the first Gifted turns New York into Dante's Inferno, there's a good chance Christian Americans will see The Gift as the tool of the devil. If, on the other hand, the first Gifted human stops a steamboat from exploding or reattaches the arm of a boy caught in a horrible industrial accident, it's likely that religious Americans will assume The Gift is the work of the Lord/Yahweh/Buddha/The Great White Spirit. Eventually The Gift itself won't be seen as "good" or "evil", though individual Gifted probably would be seen in black and white terms. That's not to say that the characters can't operate in grey shades of morality. In fact, good stories can sprout from characters dealing with the clash of their perceived goodness or villainousness and the people they truly are underneath. (This is, after all, a staple of Silver Age comics.)
The harder question revolves around racism. How will a racist America handle Gifted blacks or natives? In This Favored Land Gifted minorities are treated much like minorities were treated during Reconstruction when they tried to exercise their right to vote. They are hunted down and killed, or scared into compliance. This is a likely reaction to openly Gifted minorities, only more so. The Nat Turner slave revolt had Southerners on edge for several decades. A Gifted slave could create even more oppressive conditions for slaves while at the same time fueling the flames of abolition.
Gifted slaves could polarize the nation even more than it was historically, pushing the nation into war much sooner than it did in our timeline. An earlier start to the war favors the South. The Confederacy was at a severe disadvantage in manpower. The 1850s saw a large number of immigrants arrive in the United States, the lion's share remaining in the North. If the war starts earlier in the century, the manpower difference between the North and the South is not as great.
Gifted slaves could also unite the country against them. Whites North and South worried that armed slaves would start a slave insurrection. Imagine what they would think if a slave could fly at supersonic speeds or set things on fire with her mind? Fear of super powered blacks and natives could actually postpone the war or circumvent it entirely. In its place might be a wider, bloodier set of "Indian Wars" and anti-slave lynchings.
This assumes that blacks and natives are open in the use of their Gifts. Another option is to assume that they keep their Gifts hidden — the default view in This Favored Land &mndash; while Gifted whites openly display their Gifts. This, in turn, would play into racist attitudes of the time. You then have a way of sliding covert adventures into your "open" campaign.
No matter what you decide to do with American society, you can still keep the four organizations described in Chapter 2 of This Favored Land. The Society of the Raven would lose its mandate to hide The Gift, but it could still keep its mission to preserve it. The Knights of the Velvet Glove could perhaps operate a little more openly (in the South, at least), but for the most part they would remain clandestine. Reverend Holden might be seen for what he is more readily, or maybe his ability simply shields humanity from the knowledge that he is Gifted. The Sons of Canaan can be left unchanged.
The Course of the War
The premise of Godlike — gritty superhero roleplaying during World War II — is that Talents basically cancelled each other out. At a tactical level they changed the face of combat, but at an operational and strategic level the Second World War followed the same course it did in our timeline.
In Godlike super heroes can be as powerful as tanks, but mundane humans have access to tanks. Talents are powerful weapons, but they aren't devastating in their own right.
There's much less parity between mundane 19th Century weapons and super heroes. There were some powerful cannons, but they were hard to aim and slow to fire. Firearms were also relatively inaccurate and lacked penetration. Tied to the linear tactics of the day, it's not hard to imagine the Union super hero Terrible Swift Sword cutting through whole divisions by himself. While you are quite free to hand wave this and take the Godlike stance that the war would unfold as it did historically, it's probably more "realistic" to assume that The Gifted could have a major impact on the battlefield.
This creates a problem for the Confederacy. Given the manpower disparity between the North and the South, the Confederacy is looking at a disparity of Gifted superheroes, too. If we assume that open use of The Gift produces a "force multiplier" (to use combat theory terms), a Civil War where the Gift is openly used is more likely to go against the South, and probably sooner than it did in our timeline.
If you want to give the Confederacy a fighting chance, you need to address this disparity. The previous section gave one suggestion: start the war sooner, say in 1851 instead of 1861. The North would have access to fewer immigrants. The cotton supply in Europe could be smaller at the start of hostilities, allowing the Confederacy's "King Cotton" strategy to actually work and bring Britain and France into the war on the side of the South.
(Historical tidbit: The Confederacy restricted the sale of cotton to Britain in the early part of the war. They hoped that a cotton shortage — and pressure from unemployed textile workers — would force Britain to end the war in favor of the South. Unfortunately, 1860 was a bumper year for the cotton crop and British warehouses were full. All "King Cotton" did was limit the purchase of Southern goods and the taxes such sales would have brought in. By the time cotton supply became an issue, Britain found new sources of cotton in Egypt and India.)
Another option is to change the source of The Gift. Instead of Edgar Allan Poe's death and the Dream Wave, make the source of The Gift something more localized to the South.
Here's a suggestion. Keep the Dream Wave but have it emanate from a ritual conducted by a voodoo practitioner in New Orleans. As the Wave moves out, it loses potency. The Gift is thus more prevalent in the South (and, perhaps, Mexico) than it is in the North.
If The Gifted have a major impact on the war, you might find you have quite a bit of work ahead of you. As your game timeline diverges from our real timeline, you will suddenly find you have the whole course of a war to plot out. This can be a daunting task, particularly if you don't have a working knowledge of 19th Century operations and strategy. This will have the greatest effect if you center your game on combat operations. If your game is more about espionage or crime fighting in a major city, you won't have to do more than specify the odd battle location and who won/lost.
If you're into alternate history, plotting out the war could be a lot of fun. If this seems more like drudgery than fun, you might want to consider going the Godlike route after all and maintain the war's historical timeline.
Captain Confederacy Versus Terrible Swift Sword
To what degree you worry about the course of the war or the fabric of society is up to you, the GM, based on the tastes of your gaming group. Some groups will want to explore the effect of openly visible super powers on every aspect of 19th Century life. Other groups will simply want to help Robert E. Lee win at Gettysburg or Hooker win at Chancellorsville. You might not even care about the war itself, relegating it to an interesting historical backdrop.
No matter what you want to do — fight as Captain Confederacy above Little Round Top, airlift hundreds of slaves over the Mason-Dixon line, or jump in the path of John Wilkes Booth's bullet — hopefully this essay has inspired you with some ideas for a more "open" approach to Civil War superhero roleplaying.
Each Delta Green volume includes optional rules that tweak traditional Call of Cthulhu so it plays with a very particular Delta Green style. Call of Cthulhu is oriented primarily toward academically-inclined investigators in the 1920s, after all, while Delta Green is all about modern-day federal agents and their accomplices. In both cases the investigators face horrible cults and try to thwart terrifying alien gods, but they use very different tools and techniques.
The original Delta Green book, from 1996, included a host of new skills (and a number of old ones that Call of Cthulhu abandoned in its fifth edition) and stacks of modern-day occupations and firearm stats. Delta Green: Countdown (1999) added rules for psychic powers, a few more skills, and an even more massive list of occupations. Delta Green: Eyes Only (2007) added rules for interrogation, hacking, and the emotional toll of murder.
Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity, coming as soon as humanly possibly in a limited-edition hardback, adds its own set of options to bring Call of Cthulhu closer to Delta Green.
Combat Options
First we have a number of options tailor-made for players who love the heavy firepower available in some Delta Green games. There have been many Delta Green games set in World War II and in Vietnam, for example, where entrenched firefights are inevitable. The new combat options include:
Burst Fire: A change to the way automatic fire is handled, so the number of bullets that hit in a burst depends on your accuracy, not blind luck.
Disabling Wounds: An option for critical wounds that makes them an interesting alternative to losing massive hit points, rather than a player-hating punishment that adds insult to injury.
Taking Cover: Details for using cover to keep yourself from getting shot. Taking effective cover while attacking accurately requires skill and luck; if you fire blind, you’re probably a lot safer.
Called Shots: A short rule that allows a skilled fighter to get a dramatic result without waiting for that “1/5 of what you need” attack roll.
Suppressing Fire: Rules for laying a ton of bullets down to disorient and intimidate opponents. It’s terribly inaccurate but it has a chance to force enemies to keep their heads down rather than shooting back.
Martial Arts: Rules that tailor the Martial Arts skill to particular styles and give it a few more options.
Stress Disorders
Next we have a section on stress disorders, which make the most common symptoms of terrible trauma—PTSD, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, depression—a more prominent part of the game. These rules give the player and GM the option of taking one of these disorders as an indefinite insanity rather than taking the short-term but more severe debilitation of temporary insanity. I look forward to seeing how playtest groups receive that choice.
This section also includes much more detailed rules for the effects of those disorders, adding to the cursory treatment they get in the Call of Cthulhu sixth edition rules, and—my favorite section—adds rules for the measures investigators are likely to take to find relief from those disorders when they get them. If you’ve ever wondered why Delta Green agents in the novels and short stories seem to always be getting drunk, these rules will tell you.
Background Options
Finally we have a new set of rules for character backgrounds: Relationships and flashbacks. If you use them, many investigators will have one or two of each.
Relationships are close personal ties that an investigator can call upon for help through a crisis, whether it’s talking down from a panic attack or getting help out of a legal bind. The more you use a relationship, though, the more strained it becomes. Investigators who want to build and maintain those personal ties do it at risk to their Delta Green operations. Of course, if your investigator is a hard-as-nails type who needs no personal ties, you can take minimal or no relationships and load up on flashbacks instead.
Flashbacks are important memories of past operations, left completely undefined until they are played out. When a flashback comes into play, it’s a brief remembered scene from that character’s past, played out then and there, that provides some specific clue to the present investigation—at the cost of Sanity from the remembered trauma. This section includes guidelines for coming up with the details of brief flashback scenes on the fly. Flashbacks are a perfect way to say “My character is a Delta Green veteran” without coming up with the details of your past history before play begins.
These rules options will be the first thing to go to the playtesters for Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity, who are already gathering on a new Google group for just that purpose. I really look forward to seeing what they make of these ideas and what suggestions they have for improving them.
Meanwhile, Elsewhere In the Book
In the meantime, all the writers of Targets of Opportunity are in the last stages of work.
Warren Banks has submitted his chapter on M-EPIC, a Canadian police group dedicated to investigating and exploiting the paranormal and is putting the final tweaks on it.
Greg Stolze is now giving a final review to the massive Cult of Transcendence, which he wrote many years ago and has now updated with the help of Kenneth Hite.
Dennis Detwiller is long since finished with Black Cod Island. I’ve added a few bits and pieces to it—it’s fascinating, creepy stuff—and am now working on a Black Cod Island scenario.
Scott Glancy has finished The Children of the Worm (speaking of creepy) and is in the last few pages of The De Monte Clan, his treatment of Delta Green in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Having seen all this material come together, I’m very excited about sharing it and seeing the finished book. With Delta Green: Eyes Only we brought out material that had been published, in very limited numbers, long ago. With Targets of Opportunity, everything is new. Your Delta Green agents have some nasty surprises ahead.
- Location:Chelsea, Ala.
As I’ve said in interviews, my Arc Dream partner Dennis and I were actually a little dubious when Allan Goodall first pitched the book. We’d known Allan for years as a die-hard Delta Green booster, but we worried that the Civil War just wouldn’t have enough traction to be worth a setting book. The Wild West, maybe; people love their gunslingers and Men With No Names. But the Civil War seemed like it would be too static, or something, to make a viable setting book. Still, we asked Allan to expand on his pitch so we’d get a better feel for what he had in mind.
The more we heard, the better it got.
This Favored Land isn’t just a Civil War roleplaying game. It’s THE Civil War roleplaying game. Sure, it’s set in an alternate history where there are secret people who have strange powers, but Allan took a cue from Godlike and built his history so that the “alternate” parts could be lifted off with zero effort. You can run the game as a straightforward Civil War game, or you can run it with superpowers, and it’s going to be a hell of a fun time either way.
This Favored Land includes rules tailoring Wild Talents superpowers to its particular setting, and it adds plenty of details to give action scenes the right tone. It takes the rules of Wild Talents, already built for fast, chaotic, suspenseful action, and makes them even more dangerous by emphasizing the primitive state of medicine in the 19th century.
More importantly, This Favored Land is loaded with chapters that encapsulate the history of the war and provide enough context that a newcomer can become familiar with the setting and the perspectives of both sides.
It gives enough details about daily life on the front lines and back home to add flavor and depth to games, and it provides terrific suggestions for starting and maintaining many kinds of campaigns, from the armies maneuvering and preparing to battle to espionage in the cities behind the lines to conspiracies to spirit runaway slaves to freedom and save those of the Gifted who are near to being hunted down.
The Gifted, of course, are the men and women with strange powers. They’re usually shunned and feared whenever they appear, and there are secret societies actively trying to eradicate them or manipulate them. We wouldn’t want the War to get boring.
The website for This Favored Land has many pages of excerpts from the book, including half a dozen pregenerated player characters. In the previews you'll see some of Todd Shearer's terrific illustrations, and of course you'll see exactly what Fred Hicks and Shawn Camp came up with when designing the look and feel of the book around Allan's writing and Todd's art. As the publisher and lead editor—helped tremendously by co-editor John Marron, with excellent proofreading by Allan's own wife Alana—I couldn't be more pleased.
This weekend I’ll start sending the ebook version in PDF out to customers who have ordered the book, and Monday I expect to place the print order to get the physical books.
And, even better, Allan has already written two more complete adventures for This Favored Land that we’ll release in PDF after the book comes out. Watch this space for details.
Allan will be running games of This Favored Land at ImagiCon (Birmingham, Ala., March 27-29), GenCon (Indianapolis, Ind., Aug. 13-17), and DragonCon (Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 4-7). I would love it if other gamers get the book and register This Favored Land games of their own.
Order your copy now, and sign up for the convention games early. I joined in one that he ran last year and had a blast.
This Favored Land:
- Location:Chelsea, Ala.
- Mood:
excited
You can thank the playtesters for that.
The original manuscript was brought in at around 85,000 words. When we received feedback from the playtesters, there was one word that was used by all of them: more. They wanted more background information, more ideas for running campaigns during the American Civil War, more example characters... more of everything, really.
With Shane's direction, I added the content that the playtesters asked for. As a writer, this kind if freedom is incredible. I stripped out a lot of stuff I wanted in the book in order to hit the original page limit. Much of what I had mentally edited out was content the playtesters desired. Most of it saw its way into the final book.
Heartfelt thanks go out to Shane Ivey and John Marron for their editing work on This Favored Land, Fred Hicks and Shawn Camp for the page design, and Todd Shearer for the illustrations. Everyone did a fantastic job on the book. I particularly have to thank Todd for taking the images that were in my head and bringing it to life, and for taking my sketchy notes on Fairview, Missouri and developing a usable map out of them.
- Mood: excited
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