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Friday, July 14, 2017

Gods of the Fall - Session Prep - Finding the Way



Once again we return to the Afterworld... kinda.

The characters have entered into the twisted and nonsensical interior of The Furnace. Or maybe they simply passed from one realm to another? Uncertainty about where they are combined with confusion about the rules of this place and its doors that lead to other realms has them flatfooted. In addition there are strange beings here who seem hostile in part, and who may be cypher-phages, consuming the divine energy of the cyphers the character bear.

The characters themselves are of course divinely powered and thus contain divine energy, that'll be the crux of this session as the creatures feed on that energy. This is the curse of this traveling space, as it turns mortals who stray too long into these phage creatures. The PCs will encounter some who are far more fargone than others, and may even be able to help the prior party return to the Afterworld and regain their humanity.

I have two main goals for this session:,
  1. The PCs should figure out what happened to the lost party. 
  2. The PCs should figure out how to control the traveling doors. 
The former should be easy enough as the last part of the prior session had them finding the campsite of the last party. I plan to drop clues as they investigate which combined with the behavior of one of the phages/party who has an uneasy truce with the group should point them in the right direction.
Turns out that either I wasn't adequately setting up the "riddle" or it was just a bit too obtuse, but it took the players some time to grasp the fact that the windows and doors were controlled by their wills. They did eventually figure it out, and before frustration boiled off all the fun. 
The latter calls back to the characters' trials from their first adventure during their trials within the shard of a past heaven. As divine beings they have the ability, nay the right, to enforce their will on the world(s) around them. This is something I feel strongly is a core theme to games where the players grasp at godhood: the power to change the world to your will, balanced (or not) by the wisdom to know when to do so and when not to.
I needed to take a little more direct approach with this, using a final GM intrusion to have "No-face," who had been following them around and eating their cyphers before attacking and trying to siphon off Polodius' divine power, slip through the doorway they'd opened back to the Afterworld. Removed from the doorway realm the creature vomited up some cyphers as it's body tried to return to normal, but injury and/or the duration of its stay meant that the man perished before he could become fully human once more. 

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Nuts & Bolts #126 - Mutant Crawl Classics - Repeater Bears


Post-apocalypse games have always been something I've enjoyed. I posted last year about why I was backing the Mutant Crawl Classics Kickstarter on the basis of my love for After the Bomb. I've been posting a lot of Cypher System content lately related to After the Bomb, but Mutant Crawl Classics released to backers recently and so it's only fitting that I begin to look at that game and embrace it's altogether different brand of post-apocalyptic craziness.

Ultimately, I'm not sure if MCC will earn itself a dedicated "day of the week" slot like other games/features have, but for now I'll slide my creations into N&B as an outlet...

So I saw somebody use the phrase "it bears repeating" elsewhere and now I have this crazy idea for Repeater Bears ...

Repeater Bear

Repeater bears are mutations caused by exposure to the ancients' broken and malfunctioning time dilation technology. Repeater bears have mutated the ability to become unstuck in time. They appear much like normal bears but have faint after images and pre-images caused by their temporal echoes. These temporal echoes can be made physical by interaction with temporally stable matter. Though they are not sentient they are intelligent enough to control the repeater bear's natural abilities in combat making them especially ferocious, being capable of striking multiple times thanks to their temporal echoes.
Repeater Bear: Init +1; Atk bite +4 melee (1d4+2) or claw +5 melee (1d6+1); AC 17; HD 4d8; MV 20’ or climb 10’; Act 1d20; SP Bears Repeating; SV Fort +2, Ref +6, Will +4; AL N.
Bears Repeating: When attacking, if the repeater bear hits it's target, it may attack again with a cumulative -1d penalty until it misses or the target it dead.  

Monday, July 10, 2017

Furry Road - The Triggerman

Design Notes: I'd considered making this a character a bow user early on, but then changed my mind as I realized that the technological capacity of the After the Bomb universe was more than enough for bullets to not be a rare and prized commodity. Carries a Quiver becomes Carries a Rifle and otherwise remains mostly intact. Horses primary have the traits of speed and/or strength. Swift and/or Strong seemed good descriptor options, but I obviously could only use one. Further, I really didn't need excessive strength or Might because the character prefers firearms and so Strong was out. In the end I also decided to forego Swift as well and rely on training and Edge to represent the horse's inborn speed. This allowed me to focus on adding an interesting personality to the group by way of another quirky descriptor. Enter the "Vengeful" descriptor and a character who has some personal stake in the mission at hand... 


Nux the Horse is a Vengeful Warrior who Carries a Rifle

Tier 3 • Effort 3
Might 16 • Edge 1
Speed 18 • Edge 3
Intellect 8 • Edge 0

Cypher Limit: 2

Armor: none

Skills:
  • Trained
    • Attack: Rifles
    • intimidation
    • torture
    • tracking
    • Craft: Rifles
    • Jumping
    • Lore: Road Hogs
  • Specialized
    • Craft: Bullets
    • Running
    • Speed Defense
Abilities:
  • Archer
  • Covering Fire/Double-tap (1 Speed point)
  • Overwatch (1 Intellect point)
  • Pierce (1 Speed point)
  • Successive Attack (2 Speed points)
  • Deadly Aim (3 Speed points)
  • Spray (2 Speed points)
  • Trick Shot (2 Speed points)
Weapons:
  • AK47 Rifle (Medium weapon, long range, rapid fire)
    • 2x magazines of 30 rounds
  • .308 Rifle (heavy weapon, long range, bolt action)
    • Nightvision scope
  • .45 Pistol (medium weapon, medium range)
Equipment: Clothing, light tools, functional GPS map, 2x rations, flashlight, duct tape.

Initial Link to the Adventure: Your gang was wiped out by the Road Hogs and you want revenge, plain and simple. 

Connections:
  • You are especially taken with Jim the Raccoon's junk-scavenged crafts, and when you use an item in a way that requires a roll, add +1 to the result. 
  • You think that Jessie the Rabbit talks too much and wonder if she really understands the threat of the Road Hogs.