How Naming Affects a World

As I finish up work on the Shattered World setting (more on that in a few weeks, assuming the rest of the art and editing comes through), I’m part into playtesting of a tabletop RPG set in a world of savages. Literally, even the players are naked jungle villagers. And names matter, as you’ll see in a minute.

'What lays beyond the fog?' by Armando Maynez on Flickr

‘What lays beyond the fog?’ by Armando Maynez on Flickr

The player characters live generations after the downfall of a twisted version of Aztec civilization, complete with human sacrifices and slavery. In fact, they use the same blood-based magic; they just don’t have hundreds of human slaves to throw onto a pyre. All they have is their own blood or that of another.

When I first wrote up the rules, I wanted to remind players that they were evoking spells first defined by a baroque civilization. So I took a page from Têkumel and gave the spells baroque names: Ascertainment, Devitilization, Elicitation, Translocation. These strange words were passed down, generation to generation, even as humanity reverted to subsistence hunting.

Then playtesting began. Between the scenes of velociraptor fights and encounters with spirits, I noticed something:

Nobody referred to the spells by name.

After the first session, I thought about this. I realized that the names were too hard for my players to remember. Who will remember that the spell to reduce Brawn is named Devitilization? And who’s going to call it that?

Which led to a second realization: if my twenty-first century players can’t remember the name, how well would subsistence hunters? They’d surely have a strong oral tradition, but memorizing precise, flamboyant names? Unless those names were required for the spell to function–which I hadn’t established–they had to go.

I rewrote all the spell names into simple, action-oriented phrases: Create Terror, Destroy Utterly, Disappear, and Move Like Thought. Not only are they easier to remember, they evoke the game’s mood: straightforward and savage.

The game is called Blood Rites, and I’ll post more here as it comes together. I will leave you with one spell:

Create Terror

Use within 2 days

Weak One sentient is gripped with fear. If it succeeds on a Spirit roll of 2, it is merely immobilized; otherwise it immediately flees the immediate area.

Strong As above, but affects any creatures of the caster’s choice within a 10-foot radius up to 50 feet from the caster.

Epic All targets of the caster’s choosing within a 50-foot radius of the caster are immediately reduced to gibbering puddles of raw terror. Each target either cowers helplessly or flees screaming as far as possible, running thoughtlessly for at least 5 minutes (caster chooses effect for each target).

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Poisons of the Shattered World

'A Vial of Mystery' by tharosa1942 on Flickr

‘A Vial of Mystery’ by tharosa1942 on Flickr

This is part of my ongoing series on the Shattered World setting, which contains pieces you can drop into your own game. Today: poisons!

Karawa powder is a strong irritant, derived from certain ores found mainly on the island of Iziz. While fairly expensive, it is odorless and tasteless, and enough of it will kill an adult. It is typically sold in small paper packets.

Marik acid is sold in small bottles as a household corrosive, particularly used to destroy calcium buildup from sea water. Ingested, its victim will die a horrible death within minutes, and it’ll leave a good scar on skin, too.

When swallowed, the bitter kumalu root attacks the lungs and kills within half an hour. It’s normally sold in small bags, and remains widespread due to its effectiveness as a vermin poison.

Crushed langam berries taste curiously like meat, so they are typically added to a sauce or rub. This neuro-muscular poison kills within an hour, but its effects are subtle.

Sissano venom is a mild, non-fatal nerve poison that nevertheless causes its victim great pain, stiffness, and lethargy for a day or two, and thus is a favorite for poison-tipped arrows. Usually sold in small sachets.

Magori venom, sold in tiny vials, must be injected into its victim; it is harmless when swallowed. If injected, it attacks the nerves and kills within seconds. Fortunately, it is extremely rare due to the difficulty and danger of extraction.

Tanggu spores are nasty business. When these spores contact living tissue, they attach and feed off the tissue itself to form a viscous, grey-green sludge. It literally sloughs off the victim’s skin and muscles within minutes. I have never found them in the wild (perhaps some supplier cultivates them?), and are sold in clay bottles.

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Claymen, Monsters of the Shattered World

This is part of my ongoing series on the Shattered World setting, which contains pieces you can drop into your own game. Time for a different take on the golem.

Introduction

Claymen stand as another example of popular stories falling far short of the horrible reality. They are presented as simple humanoid creatures made by magic, formed from clay and performing simple jobs and tricks by their masters.

Physical Description

Claymen need souls. The ritual required to create a clayman involves the ritual sacrifice of an intelligent being, whose soul—vastly diminished—sinks into the prepared clay. The clay then shapes itself into a vaguely humanoid form, and those horrid red pinpoint eyes appear in its face.

Personality

Unlike a zombie, a clayman is not bound to its master by distance, and will follow an order even if a thousand miles away from its master. It will only follow its master’s orders, and can only keep one order in its mind at once. These orders are simple.

What makes claymen so horrible is their flexibility in combat. Claymen seem to exult in physical battle, and form their clay bodies in many ingenious shapes to avoid damage or kill their foes. They can squash and stretch themselves, as well as turn their appendages into steel-hard blades or huge clubs.

And then, of course, there is the legend of Ven, the Rogue Clayman. It somehow broke away from its master and made its home in a forest, terrorizing any who ventured within. It stalked trespassers at night, turning its body into any shape imaginable to attack its victims with a malevolent intelligence, oozing away if odds turned against it but inevitably returning the next night. While this sounds like a story told to frighten children, certain rituals could cause these effects.

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Sea Devils of the Shattered World

This is part of my ongoing series on the Shattered World setting, which contains pieces you can drop into your own game. This time, we look at the sahuagin or sea devils of D&D, and imagine if they were civilized.

Sea Devils

Physical Description

Sea Devils by Khairul Hisham

Sea Devils by Khairul Hisham

Sea devils have been boogey-men since the times of the Old Ones. Considering their tough, scaly skin, webbed hands and feet, large claws, and surprise raids from the sea, the fear is understandable.

Sea devils claim to be the original humanoid race of our world, which the Old Ones molded into humans, elves, and dwarves, supposedly never satisfied with these “degenerate” forms of the sea devils.

Personality

Sea devils think of only one thing: consumption. This has bred a strong and vicious race. Unfortunately, they prefer to consume the flesh of intelligent creatures, particularly elves.

While sea devils have always posed a danger to sea-going vessels, for the past few hundred years their aggressiveness and organization have grown dramatically. Sea devils now occasionally attack whole flotillas at a time.

Social Structure

There are few enough humanoid meals to support the lizardmen race, of course, so sea devils eat mainly fish and other sea creatures. They are hunters, and eat only meat. They care little for possessions—what’s the use of a bauble one cannot eat?—and go naked, strapped with strong leather pouches to carry supplies.

They live in a vast undersea city, Saguahain, that they carved out of a lava plain deep in the ocean. Tens of thousands of sea devils live here, though they spend much of their time out hunting or raiding. The city is laid out in nine districts, patterned after hell, and this is where sea devils bred sharks, squids, and giant octopi for food and combat.

Saguahain is ruled by a King or Queen, though the crown swaps heads frequently as the many members of the Undersea Kingdom vie for power.

Mating and Young

According to Darro Crater’s observations, sea devils form surprisingly strong attachments to their mates, and seem to mate for decades. A female will hatch dozens of tiny sea devil spawn, which take only a few months to develop into tiny but otherwise self-sufficient sea devils. They demonstrate no concept of childhood, maturation, or adulthood; all must hunt, and young sea devils must learn quickly or die in a shark’s gullet.

Sea devils can live for centuries, and appear to grow stronger but less agile as they do. However, they are usually killed by a rival before reaching their first century.

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DROP Session Log: The Horror of the Desert Isle

DROP - coverMy sci-fi storytelling game, DROP, is intended for tales of starship crew members descending to a planet, exploring a strange structure, then running for their lives. Turns out this works just as well in the past.

This session log is taken from a game of DROP in which we wanted to combine an Indiana Jones-like historical fiction story with something from the Cthulhu Mythos.

We agreed to be prisoners on a ship en route to Australia circa 1800.

Characters:

  • Ed the heavy: 180 pounds of pure muscle and a featherweight IQ.
  • Harold Winter: A nebbish, bookkeeper who was guilty of fraud, forgery and embezzlement, and is probably the most nervous transportee on the ship…BUT some of his former colleagues are convinced he got a chunk of money, and has it on the ship with him.
  • Birdie Malone: thief and con artist. Pretty great with a knife. Transported due to pregnancy.
  • Ezra “Mac” Rannald: a mouthy religious fanatic, a Friend from Armagh with plenty of know-how.

Scene 1: Preparation

Unknown: The continent itself

Birdie is attempting to finagle some sort of greater comfort in the hold of the ship…BUT the rest of the occupants are getting pissed off with Birdie’s constant demands.

Ed cuffs people left and right to defend Birdie’s honor.

As Mac is tossing thru the gallery of the ship, the Lord God has seen fit to grant his blessing with two bottles of brandy, and flask of whiskey, a sharp knife, and a bit of hard tack and dried fruit. Thanking his Lord and Maker, he pockets these provisions and silently gives his thanks.

Harold, while skulking around on deck hears the crew looking out and yelling about something. He peers over the starboard wale and sees flotsam and jetsam floating around large rocks that the ship is perilously close to.

Scene 2: Arrival

Unknowns: Environmental hazards and other humans

Harold hears the crew breathe a sigh of relief as they clear the rocks…then suddenly the ship is lifted high and begins to break in two. The crew scrambles for the lifeboats, and suddenly everything is covered in water.

Mac, Harold, Ed, and Birdie come-to on a giant onyx disc in the middle of a desert. A few dead bodies lay around them.

Scene 3: Drop

Unknowns: Animal enemies and the nature of the complex

Spotting the trees in the distance, Mac decides that the best shelter and water will be there. Giving thanks to the almighty, and a nip from his acquired flask, he heads off…BUT, as Mac sips from his flask he finds himself with a mouth full of what tastes like blood. He spits it out violently.

Birdie gathers supplies and food from the dead bodies, and persuades the others to come find shelter with her…BUT Birdie doesn’t notice a small, bleeding wound on her leg.

Ed sees strange letters in the stone, which glow when blood drips onto them. He decides to head away with Birdie.

Scene 4: Exploration

Unknowns: Who will cause problems during the escape?

The group arrives at the trees to discover they’re a mirage, hiding a pool of blood and strange onyx trees.

The disc rises into the air to reveal a tower, which spirals open to reveal an egg.

Birdie begins contractions, which time to pulses by the egg.

Ed runs at the egg, nearing the zombies…BUT he stops, drops his stick, and joins the zombies in their dance around the tower.

Plateau von LengMeanwhile, the tower continues to rise, revealing a strange city.

Using their weight, Mac and Harold manage to snap off a large obsidian branch to go fishing for Ed the Large…BUT this causes the egg to change color and mutate into strange shapes.

Left by the others, Birdie manages to deliver. She drags herself up to try and look for a way out. She discovers a glowing portal and goes through to find a beach and the ocean on the other side. She turns and beckons to the others.

Scene 5: Escape

The egg cracks. Tentacles and misshapen arms burst out of it, randomly smashing the city’s buildings like toothpicks.

Harold runs away, not seeing Birdie…BUT skeletal onyx hands reach up out of the sand and drag Harold down.

Mac sees Birdie and drags Ed towards her…BUT Ed’s eyes open to reveal all-black pupils. He pulls Mac around and opens his mouth. Mac screams.

Birdie screams in anguish, then as the city collapses on the misshapen creature, she turns and runs towards the beach. She falls to her knees, exhausted, her newborn baby safely in her arms. Fade to black.

Bonus Director’s Cut Alternate Ending

Instead of fading to black at the end, the baby opens its eyes, revealing black pupils, and exclaims, “Thank you for freeing me!”

 

Enjoy that? Pick up DROP now at DriveThruRPG, and pay what you want.

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DROP Session Log

In my tabletop game DROP (pay-what-you-want on DriveThruRPG), you play the crew of a starship on a doomed mission. The players all write down their characters’ actions on a shared piece paper.

What does that look like? I, historicula, and historicula’s brother wrote the following story:

Phase 1: Preparation

The basic scenario will be a medical ship sent to contain an outbreak. We decided to set this in the Firefly universe. We would be on an Alliance military ship (an interplanetary heavy frigate) with medical personnel.

'another angle -- are those solar power collectors? asteroid field adds to realism' by torley on Flickr

‘another angle — are those solar power collectors? asteroid field adds to realism’ by torley on Flickr

The target would be a colony of ship-builders, made up of asteroids. Unknown to us, they have been subjected to an “improved” form of Pax that is creating a different kind of Reaver, one prone to bouts of construction and destruction.

UNKNOWN: The ship’s exact nature (specifically, a conflict between the medical officers intended mission and the actual one).

Characters:

  • Walker, grizzled former combat medic, good in high-stress situations. Has a drinking problem.
  • Conway, medical officer, general surgeon – competent stubborn, something of a jerk – held a gun once, but mostly here to serve out time paid for medical school.
  • Ace Hunter, hotshot pilot, brash, who needs to be put down a peg, but refuses.

Phase 2: The Arrival

We arrive at the colony, and Ace notices no landing lights. The docking station promptly collapses.

A frantic message is received: “Day 3, infection spreading faster than expected. Trying to contain workers. Alliance not responding. Won’t last 24 hours. If you get this message–(static)”

Ace navigates the ship to the cargo bay and docks with it.

Walker preps a medical away team that includes Ace, but one crew member is out sick, and the other has a malfunctioning rifle.

Dr. Conway preps the medical facility, and has a briefing with the infectious disease specialist in the medical bay about how this outbreak may be related to Pax.

UNKNOWNS: Environmental hazards and sabotage

Phase 3: The Drop

Walker and Hunter head into the ship. A sudden EMP pulse blacks out the ship and parts of the colony, including the comm array. The away team’s equipment is EMP-protected.

While exploring the hallway, Ace turns a corner, screams, and fires randomly…at a dead body that catapulted out of the ceiling. A bullet ricochets back and hits him.

Walker patches Ace up and reseals his suit, then sends him back to the ship while Walker continues into the colony.

Conway and a nurse prep a biodome in the medical bay to treat the injured Ace and investigate the dead body. Wearing biohazard gear, the medical officer begins treatment of Ace and autopsy of the body, but Conway does not notice the tear in the biodome.

UNKNOWNS: Environmental hazards and intelligent enemies

Phase 4: Exploration

Conway radios Walker to find the Environment Control and retrieve “T629 vial” (Walker has no idea what this is). Ont he way there, a door trap explore, severely wounding one team member and destroying stairwell and hallway back to the ship. The doro reveals a barracks full of disgruntled workers…but they are building something.

Back in the med bay, Conway restrains the pilot and comms to Walker that he needs that vial, yesterday please. Conway then synthesizes a substance from the dead worker and begins injecting that into the pilot, but it causes a violent reaction.

Ace rolls the bed and breaks it apart, killing the nurse and knocking Conway to the side. Ace runs for the engine room, but the bed gets caught in a hallway next to a vent.

UNKNOWN: Who will cause problems during the escape?

Phase 5: Escape

'Explosion' by nirufe on Flickr

‘Explosion’ by nirufe on Flickr

Back in the colony, Walker discovers that the colonist are survivors, who are building a supergun. They all head to Environmental Control, fighting off Reavers the whole way. They make it, grab the vial, and proceed to the extraction point.

Conway radios Walker for the vial, and is notified that he has it. They rendezvous. Conway takes the vial, along with the survivors, workers, and a fire team. They move through the ship, attempting to install the vial in the ship’s own air purifiers, but as they head down the final hallway Ace leaps out of a ventilation shaft.

Ace leaps at Conway, knocking the vial out of her hands and smashing it. Walker and Conway make their way to the nearest shuttle to escape to a nearby asteroid. However, a member of the fire team exhibits Reaver symptoms. Conway shoots him.

Walker demands an explanation. Conway explains that he was given orders that nobody outside of this ship would ever find out what happened at the colony. With the vial broken, everyone on the ship is now infected, other than the two of them. They run for the shuttle and board amid explosion and rapid gunfire. There’s a rapid countdown and lift-off. As Conway radios out her final report, the station and ship explode, with the shuttle apparently caught in the explosion.

END

 

Like what you read? Grab DROP now.

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Bugbears of the Shattered World

This is part of my ongoing series on the Shattered World setting, which contains pieces you can drop into your own game. It’s based on the Gamer Assembly‘s Shattered Seas meta-setting.

Here’s a rather different take on bugbears.

Bugbears

Physical Description

Svelte, silver-furred killers, bugbears glide out of the woods on four legs, then rise on their haunches to slash at their enemies with long, razor-sharp claws normally retracted into their forepaws. Instead of the brutish brawn of an orc or the feral unpredictability of a tree-goblin, bugbears move with grace and purpose, wielding their foot-long claws with the skill of a fencer.

Personality

Bugbears attack small or otherwise weak groups, and as strange as it may seem, the urban myth is true: they only ever take a single victim away with them. Others may be killed or simply knocked unconscious by the bugbears’ massive bulk. The bugbears’ victim is never seen again.

I know of two plausible explanations for this behavior. One theory states that the bugbears simply eat the victim, and that a single humanoid is a sufficient meal for a family of bugbears.

The other theory, championed most strongly by the scholar Darro Cater, points out two strange but true facts: not even a shred of any victim has ever been found, and bugbears act with definite intelligence. There are no records of bugbears speaking—other than old wives’ tales to scare children—but they do attack and defend themselves very well, even retreating as a group when the odds turn against them.

Darro believes that bugbears sacrifice their victims in a magical ritual that consumes the victims’ bodies. Stranger things are true.

Social Structure

Bugbears have only ever been seen in groups of 3 to 4. These are likely family units, and are more than enough of a threat for all but the most seasoned adventurers.

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Skullpit, the City of Bones

This is part of my ongoing series on the Shattered World setting, which contains pieces you can drop into your own game. It’s based on the Gamer Assembly‘s Shattered Seas meta-setting.

This post introduces an independent island, not yet claimed by any of the three empires.

Skullpit, the City of Bones

Far off the coast of Iziz lies a dark island, still unclaimed by either the Empire of Shadow or the nearby Silver Shields. At the center of this island, Skarr, lies a deep, dark crater, which itself houses the ruins of an ancient city, now known only as Skullpit. Twisted stone buildings claw at the air, and besides the thousands of bones scattered over the twisting streets, deep shafts fall into the depths of the earth.

Those foolish enough to make land on Skarr—and get past the thorn-choked underbrush to reach the city—have reported movement within its long-dead precicnts. Skeletons now shuffle along the streets of Skullpit. Some whisper that a lich has taken up residence here, creating a skeleton army. But for what purpose?

The Temple of the Withered Hand

This square marble temple takes up nearly an entire city block. Thin obelisks rise from its crumbling outer wall, while inside its courtyard stand several pagodas and open-air sacrificial pits. At the center of the complex stands the temple proper: a mass of marble in weird spherical shapes, like a melted soap sculpture of an elder god.

But this is only the top of the building. Once inside the creature-infested building, one will notice the stairs descending to several levels. Each level consists of a circular sacrificial chamber, with doors leading to a circular hallway that leads onto cramped antechambers (some of which still contain useful spell components).

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The Towers of Pain

This is part of my ongoing series on the Shattered World setting, which contains pieces you can drop into your own game. It’s based on the Gamer Assembly‘s Shattered Seas meta-setting.

This post introduces the headquarters for the feared lieutenants of the High Wizards of Iziz.

The Towers of Pain

History

As the High Wizards grew their power and formed the Wolves of Shadow, they knew they would need to keep all the Wolves in one place. So, one of the Wolves’ earliest duties was to clear out an old tower complex built during the Dawn of Magic, and turn it into the Wolves’ headquarters. The Wolves who still survive from that time remember that job with fondness and exhaustion; it took them weeks to clear out all the monsters.

The complex sits on the island of Thorn, which was once the home of a dragon and later a wizard who performed large numbers of experiments in the towers during the Dragon Plague.

Description

Three tall towers rise in the center of the island of Thorn. Surrounded by a twenty-foot stone wall, then dozens of stone outbuildings and an outer wall of alabaster, the Towers of Pain stand as a grim monument to the Wolves’ power and presence.

One tower is made of black stone, another of white stone, and a third is a mottled gray, and they range from fifty to one hundred feet in height. Some claim that the towers change height over time.

Within the towers’ walls are meeting rooms and bedrooms for the Wolves. They are well-furnished, with plenty of wood and expensive fabrics. The Wolves have their privileges.

The lower floors of the towers house dungeons and pits that hold more dangerous people and monsters. The upper floors are reserved for—as the Wolves describe it, with a smirk—aggressive questioning.

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Bounty Hunter Blues: a Cowboy Bebop Fiasco playset

Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop (c) Sunrise, Bandai

(Time for a special announcement and a temporary detour from my Shattered World posts.)

The anime Cowboy Bebop exists in a futuristic setting of spaceships, bounty hunters, mafia, and crime. It’s a Hong Kong crime drama in space. It’s a John Woo movie with spaceships. It’s a setting ripe for a Fiasco.

Bounty Hunter Blues is a 9-page playset for the Fiasco RPG, using a world very similar to that of Cowboy Bebop, but which does not require expensive licensing fees.

Download free at DriveThruRPG. Check out a playtest video below.

[iframe_loader width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/G5IeH7Wizzg” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

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