Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 50 of 156)

General heading for all RPGs.

Looking at an OSR Mecha Game

September 11, 2014 / Bear

It's been said over and over. Where are the mecha clones?

Personally, I enjoyed playing Battletech and Centurion quite a bit growing up. I think Scott and I ran so many Centurion games, I thought about custom hovertanks in my sleep.

I also had a perchant for making a lot of units for Battletech. I was terrible at tracking heat, so I usually lost by blowing up my own mech. Maybe that's why I liked Centurion so much more.

So when it comes to an OSR Mecha game, what do we need? After all, there is the Battleforce Quickstart Rules and the Classic BattleTech Quickstart rules, so why another game?

For me, that's easy to answer: It's fun to make. More than that, I have a mech hidden in every fantasy world I've ever designed. Spelljammer? Those spacehulks were massive dropships. The haunted mountain with ghostly voices that drive men mad? That's the computer system still looking for the TOG crew that died thousands of years earlier. (Yes, it has one more shot before it loses all its ammo.) The Shrine of the Iron Golem? An abandoned, yet intact Cyclops . (This one has a Gauss Rifle instead of an Autocannon.)

With a worlds-spanning concept like Spelljammer, it was easy to add yet another Crystalline Sphere that existed way beyond any known path through the phlogiston. Very few things made it from those distant spheres, but the handful of items that do lead to some very interesting magic items. I don't mean artifact-type weapons, but other things more mundane. I'm talking things like UHF communicators, AIs, non-addicting stimulants, and even some cyberpunk elements like cranial dataport jacks. When you cross magic and technology, you get all kinds of weird things.

Then again, sometimes I don't want a crazy fantasy world, I just want to run a lance from one side of the board to the other in a desperate blitz to get to base through enemy territory. No air support or planet destroying megaships involved, just tanks and mecha slugging it out on some far-flung scorched world.

Again, with one of the Quickstart rules I mentioned earlier, I could do that fairly easily. I still have my Centurion Box and original BatteTech rules (complete with a few technical updates and Maximum Tech.) Yet, there are things that I either house-ruled or just plain hated about each set of rules. I could deal with the heat rules in BattleTech, even though I was terrible at them. The heat rules force you to make strategy and save your powerful punches for opportune times. What I couldn't deal with, was facing. We would agonize over the board trying to set the facing in just the right way to move and point our primary weapons systems in the correct direction. Centurion had no heat rules, but once I reached a certain speed, I couldn't steer a hovertank correctly. (I kept turning too late and sliding sideways off the map.) I preferred the slower groundling tanks or massive hover tanks that always moved slowly. Note that my "brick" has a speed of 3.

These are not faults with the games themselves. No, the fault is mine. It's not that I just wanted to blast through everything or try to get away with things, it's just that I couldn't figure out where I'd be two moves ahead, so I got frustrated when I always felt out of place. I figured that any computer-assisted steering system could figure out how to move a tank/mech from one location to another accurately, so why not minimize those rules that blow me off the map?

Really though, I just enjoy Swords and Wizardry. With the third alternate combat sequence, I saw a tactical system that rewards quickness over flat-footed slugfests. Why not make a mecha system without heat and hover movement that feels like S&W?

The third alternate combat sequence is really simplified from OD&D. I looked for ways to track the segments and found stories of gamers using cribbage boards. Looking at the rules, though, I realized that I never really needed to know the actual segment number, I only had to know who's turn was next and when a round was over.

I made a custom board that allowed the rules as written in S&W Complete for alternate combat sequence #3 to work. Still, I wanted something a bit nicer. I discovered that if I used a backgammon board and changed the default number of segments from 6 to 7, the whole system just clicked.

In S&W fantasy, the referee had to fudge the dexterity of monsters. In my mecha game, however, everything had a dexterity score. This made the alternative combat sequence #3 a great fit. With the backgammon board, a players' choice of miniatures, markers, or even checkers to mark each combatant, a straightforward system emerged. Unlike my favorite Centurion or BattleTech, this game has quicker rules. At a glance, everyone knows who is taking a turn now and who will go next. I'm still testing it, but my 8 and 7 year old kids seem to get it. I've got it written, but now I'm testing it. I might even get a pickup game at Nuke-Con in October.

So,why an Swords & Wizardry mecha game? Because it fits once I houserule it. 🙂

Return to Sinter

September 11, 2014 / Bear

Over a year ago, I posted about Clerics and a mystery metal that provided back story for why Clerics were different from wizards. Now that I'm working on material for a zine and for a possible game in October, I wanted to refine the idea a bit to better fit within Swords & Wizardry.

Here is the standard Cleric in one of my campaign worlds. Other clerics have different power and spellcasting abilities, but this is the base upon which all others define themselves.

History

According to Elven scholars, the Canavari priests were one of first religious orders of mankind. The traditions of these priests have been maintained through thousands of years. When humans have faced their greatest threats, it has been the Canavari that lead the battle.

One of the earliest threats was a creature believed to be harmless. As humans learned to work metal, these creatures proved dangerous. The threat was not due to the loss of life, but due to the loss of cities. A monster that consumed gold and iron, threatened to destroy almost all of human technology. Men had worked hard to leave behind their stone weapons and crude dwellings. They began to make clay pots, bronze implements, and even metal weapons.

When the creatures they called the Chumam-La appeared in the thousands, men looked to Canavari to implore the gods for help. The gods responded by choosing a handful of select craftsmen to learn how to make godstone, the first divine gift to mankind.

Godstone could not be devoured by the chumam-la, allowing the priests and their armed men to destroy this feared creature.

Godstone cannot hold a sharp edge, but it is a dense material with a faint grey-blue sheen. Godstone cannot rust and it is hard to destroy. All Canavari use sling bullets, chain armor, clubs, and blunt wedges made from the divine substance. Although the armor, clubs, and wedges are sacred weapons, the priests will sell sling bullets to outsiders.

The next great threat came with the learning of magic. Mankind is drawn to the few arts of elves, so naturally, a few men sought to use magic to dominate his fellow man. Tyrants arose that wielded eldrtich forces that they could barely understand, much less contain. The ground and sky recoiled. Men and their allies were subjugated. Non-humans, even the mighty elves, were nearly eliminated from existence.

Though slow to answer, the gods granted another boon to the Canavari, the gift of magic. This divine magic worked to help the weak and bring justice to the oppressors of men. With divine protection and containment, the Canavari drove back the forces of evil and saved the world.

This is why even the agnostic elves give respect to the Canavari. The elves began to teach the old ways of magic publicly. With their help, the earth and sky were healed. Civilizations were rebuilt from the ruins bringing a time of prosperity.

It did not last. Once again determined to pervert the magical arts, evil men learned to animate the bodies of the dead to serve in vast armies. As the undead armies marched on city after city, their ranks swelled with victims reborn to serve a new masters.

Again invoking the gods, the Canavari were provided with the Symbol of the Wolf. This sacred symbol, when presented to undead creatures would break the control of evil wizards and cause them to flee from the presence of the holy symbol.

Lines of Canavari priests turned away the armies and freed the undead to return to their eternal sleep. The Canavari consider all wizards as vile heretics, yet they had saved mankind once again standing with the elves and other allies of man.

These ancient priests are dedicated to their traditions and gifts from the gods. They seek to protect manking and their allies from threats large and small. They know that when the world plunges into darkness, they will stand with the forces of light and fight.

Game Data

The Canavari are played as a Cleric as written in Swords & Wizardry with very small changes. Slings are allowed and godstone sling bullets do 1d6 damage. Due to their weight, it is rare for anyone to carry more than four of these sling bullets at any time. Most of the time, Canavari use them as valuable items to barter or gift to others. Canavari can also use blunt hand-axe type weapons they call "wedges". They do 1d6 damage.

Chainmail made from godstone provides the same protection as plate mail as well as having the same effect on encumbrance.

There are no Chaotic Canavari. All of them are Lawful.

Place in a Campaign World

Canavari are the standard warrior-priests found in D&D and D&D-like games. Since my worlds often have a range of cleric choices, this is the choice for those that want to "just be a Cleric". Other cleric types have different turning abilities and various type of magic available.

They scorn all arcane magic as evil. They will begrudgingly tolerate Lawful wizards, but actively avoid speaking with them. The referee may choose to play this up if a Wizard and a Canavari find themselves in the same party.

Not a Secret Project

August 22, 2014 / Bear

I am always working on a new project, especially when a previous one fails. This time, I am mostly taking the advice of Kevin Crawford of actually writing all the text before before attempting to publish anything. (I'm in the editing phase of the current project.)

Some time ago, I mentioned the OSR Tinkerer's Toolkit and making a quarterly zine called Odd Duck. The idea is that I am testing the toolkit to come out with a different game based on the toolkit. One new game or setting will be in every issue of Odd Duck.

The rest of the pdf will have pieces of the Toolkit in smaller articles. This includes things like mini-encounters, new monsters, new magic items, spells, playable races, magic systems, and a place to discuss a particular mechanic.

For example, in issue one, the theme is Armor. There will be an encounter with naturally armored creatures. (The answer to the encounter will not be kill them all, although that is certainly one option.) There will be two new armored creatures detailed in a monster article. There will be a demonstration of using the Alternate Combat Sequence Method No. 3 that is more visual than number-crunching. Another article details the use of spidersilk and integrating spidersilk workers into a setting. Of course, there will be spells and magic items mixed in as well.

The game for issue one will be my final version of Lorica, a large vehicle game inspired by Battletech, Centurion Legion, and various mecha.

In writing the text, Lorica has changed from the various posts here. Nanites play a big roll in the repair, management, and manufacture of various machines. There are still lots of different kinds of weapons, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. The system to create your own machines is still largely the same. I won't include the 50 types of mecha I have already created in the issue, but I'll publish them here on the website.

The machines themselves are not the bulky metal-and-wires mecha I loved in all our games of Battletech growing up. Instead, the huge machines are semi-intelligent artificial life forms. The internal structure is a type of supergel that distributes weapons damage efficiently throughout the mech while nanites effect regenerative repair. The outside will still feature ceramic outer armor. In many ways, the mech will be an extension of the pilots' own body.

By the way, it uses the alternate combat rules discussed in a separate article.

There's more to come. I recently recovered a lot of gaming journals and notes that I thought I had lost. This includes a setting I sketched out called Circles of the Nine Songs as well as various psionics systems, old dungeons, MSH characters, and NPCs galore. There is plenty to write about.

One other thing is that I use Microlite20 as part of the tinker's kit. M20 is great at prototyping and it is used for the limited testing I am able to do. All in all, I think I have finally embarked on a project that is doable and sustainable. As I said, the first issue is in editing. The second issue (which is about Magic) will be the best of the Magic Project I started in January. I won't have the spell building system (that utterly failed), but I will have article about using different mechanics for types of magic systems.

Okay, maybe there is a secret project coming. It has nothing to do with Odd Duck and it will not benefit me directly at all. All I'll say is that it has to do with M20, but I'll say nothing else. Unlike Odd Duck, I don't know if I will be able to do this project like I impicture it.

Anyway, the insanely busy season is passing for me. I haven't written anything in over two months and I am ready to go. Wish me luck!

Category: Electrum Pieces (Page 50 of 156)

Looking at an OSR Mecha Game

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