Spes Magna Games

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For several months, I’ve played Kid Avenger in a Savage Worlds post-apoc campaign. Kid appears to be a normal lad in his early to mid-teens, but his speed, strength, and agility belie that appearance. He claims he’s the result of an attempt to recreate the Super Soldier Serum created by Abraham Erskine, and that the truth of his origins are the subtext of his collection of pre-apoc comic books. Kid’s compatriots think Kid is insane, which he might be, but just because someone’s paranoid doesn’t mean nobody is out to get them.

I ended up with Kid Avenger as my character concept because I wanted to play a superhero game, but the majority of players wanted to play post-apoc in the U.S. South, and so I pretty much went with my original concept, tweaked to make him fit the setting. I’m getting a kick out playing Kid. He’s hell on wheels in combat, and his delusions (or clouded memories?) make him fun to roleplay as well.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group recently released the Savage World Super Power Companion, and I purchased the PDF. It’s my favorite expansion to Savage Worlds. It hits most of the right notes with the supers genre, and builds well on the core Savage Worlds rules.

And I say this as someone who has something of a love-hate relationship with Savage Worlds. What the game system does well, it does very well, but, ye gods, it can get fiddly and slow, especially in combat involving one or more villainous Wild Cards, at which point the fight degenerates into a contest to see who has the most Bennies. (But, this might be more a function of my erratic attention span than the game itself.)

All of what preceded really serves as an excuse to introduce two Savage Worlds supers: the Human Fly and the Fly. The former is built as a beginning character. He could be introduced into a street-level Savage Worlds superhero game as is. The Fly, however, is built as a villain, and so I wasn’t particularly worried about point costs. He’s roughly equivalent to a Power Level III character, but would likely give a Novice Power Level III hero a hard time in a fight.

Trivia Moment! Marvel’s Bill Mantlo had a hand in creating the Human Fly and the Fly for publication.

The Human Fly
Power Level II Hero

Rick Rojatt suffered serious injuries in the car crash that claimed the lives of his wife and children. A benefactor paid for multiple surgeries aimed at restoring Rojatt to health by replacing 60% of his damaged skeleton with metal bones. Even still, Rojatt was an invalid for years before a combination of physical therapy and raw will regained for him full mobility. Enhanced by his metal skeleton, Rojatt dedicated himself to training in order to develop the skills needed to become the world’s greatest daredevil stuntman. Costumed as the Human Fly, Rojatt is less a crimefighter and more of a philanthropist, using his abilities to raise awareness and money for a variety of noble causes.

Rank: Novice
Attributes: Agility d8, Smarts d6, Spirit d8, Strength d8, Vigor d10
Skills: Athletics d10, Common Knowledge d4, Driving d6, Fighting d10, Notice d6, Persuasion d4, Stealth d6
Pace: 8; Parry: 8; Toughness: 8
Hindrances: Environmental Weakness (minor – electromagnetism interferes with metal skeleton), Pacifism (minor), Vow (major)
Edges: Martial Artist, Nerves of Steel, Super Powers (30)

Powers

Dodge (2): Direct ranged attacks are at -2 to hit the Human Fly. Trapping: Training.

Fearless (2): Immune to Fear checks. Trapping: Training.

Leaping (2): 4″ (8 yards) vertical, 8″ (16 yards) horizontal. Trapping: Training.

Pace (2): Base Pace and running die type +2. Trapping: Metal Skeleton.

Parry (2): +2 Parry. Trapping: Training.

Super Attributes (10): Agility +2, Spirit +2, Strength +2, Vigor +3. Trapping: Metal Skeleton.

Super Skill (7): Athletics +3, Fighting +4. Trapping: Training.

Super Edge (2): Nerves of Steel. Trapping: Training.

Toughness +1 (1): Trapping: Metal Skeleton.

The Fly

Richard Deacon, small-time thug, ran afoul of Spider-Man during an attempt to gain ransom for two kidnapped persons. Deacon was injured and fell into the river, and authorities presumed he died. Deacon survived, and he happened to overhear J. Johan Jameson and Dr. Harlan Stillwell discuss the creation of a new hero that Jameson hoped would get rid of Spider-Man. Deacon later forced Stillwell to transform him into a metahuman by grafting onto his DNA the genetic coding of a common housefly. Thus Deacon became the Fly, a supervillain who has met little lasting success despite his amazing powers. Nevertheless, even an experienced hero ought to avoid underestimating the Fly.

Attributes: Agility d12, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d12+6, Vigor d12
Skills: Athletics d16, Common Knowledge d4, Driving d4, Fighting d10, Focus d10, Notice d12+2, Persuasion d4, Shooting d6, Stealth d6
Pace: 6; Parry: 7; Toughness: 12 (4)
Hindrances: Distinctive Appearance (minor), Greedy (major), Mean (minor)
Edges: Alertness, Extraction, No Mercy, Quick, Super Powers

Powers

Armor (2): Augemented muscles and bones. Trapping: Mutation.

Dodge (3): Direct ranged attacks are at -3 to hit the Fly. Trapping: Mutation.

Extra Limbs (2): Wings grant a +2 Gang Up bonus when used to fight. Modifier: Not Prehensile. Trapping: Wings.

Flight (8): 90″ (60 MPH). Trapping: Wings.

Push (3): Wind blast from wings. Cone template. Modifier: Strong (-2 Strength to resist and 2d6″ knockback). Trapping: Wings.

Ranged Attack (9): Sonic blast from wings. 4d6 damage. Modifier: Cone Template Optional. Trapping: Wings.

Super Attributes (16): Agility +3, Strength +3, Vigor +2. Trapping: Mutation.

Super Skill (10): Fighting +3, Focus +4, Notice +3. Trapping: Training (or Mutation for Notice).

Uncanny Reflexes (3): Excels at avoiding area attacks. Trapping: Mutation.

Wall Walker (1): Trapping: Mutation.

Tags: NPCs, Savage Worlds, superhero games

Jim Kitchen who will be hosting a charity auction for Aaron Koel via the Goodman Games Twitch Channel. If you have the ability, please consider attending the on-line auction and/or donating. Mr. Kitchen posted the following information (which I’ve cut-and-pasted from Tenkar’s Tavern):

A friend of mine, Aaron Koelman, is currently fighting a battle with Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer. Aaron’s spent most of the last year undergoing grueling chemotherapy sessions and doing his best to win a battle that has some pretty steep odds.

Aaron’s a single dad to an amazing little boy. His son means everything and when Aaron revealed his cancer to me in March one of the things we talked about was fatherhood, particularly in his current circumstances.

Aaron is trying to put together a college fund for his son. To help with that effort I’ve organized a charity auction next week on Friday. It will be a virtual auction on Twitch. Joseph Goodman has been kind enough to donate the space on his companies channel. (As well as some pretty amazing things!)

We will have a lot of RPG items, original art and some great and unique items. I am still working on collating donations but here’s a list of fine people who have already donated:

Michael Badolato/NTRPG
Julian Bernick
Hector Cruz
Jen Brinkman & Bob Brinkman
David Baity
Joseph Goodman
Jon Hershberger
Kenneth Kessenger
Jim Kitchen
Doug Kovacs
Ian McGarty
Peter Mullen
Erol Otus
James Pozenel
Yorkus Rex
James Michael Spahn
Dak J. Ultimak
Loz The-Eye

If I have somehow missed you please send me an email, PM or smoke signal. Work has had me extremely busy and I worry I have missed something somewhere.

If you have zero interest in RPG’s or original artwork then you can still help. Donations can be made via Jon Hershberger’s company Black Blade Publishing. Donations can be sent to tacojohndm@yahoo.com via Paypal.

100% of all monies raised are going directly to Aaron. Winners of auction items will be pay shipping charges but no handling fees or premiums.

If you can skip a few coffees or a lunch for a week please know that it would mean a great deal to me. Aaron is a dear friend.

I don’t know Mr. Koel. I don’t Mr. Kitchen. I do know what it’s like to be a father who’s worried about his children. If you choose to donate via PayPal as described above, please leave a comment on Tenkar’s Tavern at the link above. Tenkar is matching the first $250 donated.

Tags: Black Blade Publishing, charity auction, Goodman Games

Well, June came, stayed for a bit, and has moved on. It’s July. Pretty much a month went by without me posting a thing.

I acquired the player’s book for the second edition of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. This game has been on my radar for a while. It fits in somewhere between B/X and AD&D in terms of rules, complexity, et cetera, but it is more compatible with the former rather than the latter. I really like AS&SH.

Last week while vacationing in northest Texas, I took my laptop and my AS&SH book. When it was time to relax in the cabin, I entered player character information into Foundry VTT, which does not have an AS&SH game system, but does have Old School Essentials. So many OSR games are so close to each other that it’s possible to run multiple systems at the same time. The areas where AS&SH are not directly compatible with OSE are numerous but also largely insignificant.

Nota Bene: Each pic below embiggens when clicked.

First up, we have the Wavekisser, a two-masted sailing ship on which the PCs have set sail with Captain Three-Pistols and her motley crew.

Next are a couple of sites, the first a jungle camp and the other a mysterious cave. In the first site, Desdemona and Bridger face a giant crab.

In the second site, an incomplete PC fights undead.

Testy fires his bow and scores a natural 20!

The dronis malmorta takes 5 points of damage!

I added the character classes (and their respective class features) as items that can be clicked-and-dragged onto a character sheet. I also programmed an attribute roller that uses a combination of 4d6-drop-the-lowest and 3d6 to roll a PC’s scores.

Where a class feature requires an die roll, that function is included as part of the feature. For example, a 1st-level monk moves silently on a 5 or less on 1d12.

Some class features mimic weapons, such as the cryomancer’s icicle ability. In this case, it is set up as both a melee and a missile weapon.

Tags: AS&SH, Foundry VTT, OSE

The 2021-2022 school year is over. This month, I’m running two one-week summer camps for students. The first starts on 6 June, and the happy campers shall spend 15 hours learning the basics of Latin grammar, some history of the Romans, and the fundamentals of anti-javelin defense. Later in June, I’m looking to spend another 15 hours teaching a group of middle schoolers how to play 5E D&D. Best of all, I get paid for the camps. Huzzah.

A few days before the end of the school year, I killed my Facebook accounts after the fifth time in a month of ending up in Facebook jail. Too often in too short a period of time I was penalized and admonished about violating Facebook’s community standards, which is absurd since Facebook isn’t a community and the enforcement of its “standards” is arbitrary at best.

The first straw was me getting incarcerated for pointing out to another poster that their opinions bore more than a passing resemblance to the eugenic racism and classism of the early 20th century. The final straw was a longer incarceration for commenting in a D&D game forum about how the players’ first response to an encounter often involves violence.

But on to other things!

I at long last purchased Mutant Crawl Classics (MCC) from Goodman Games. I’ve read most of the rulebook. I love this game, and it’s given me an excuse to dust off an idea I had many years ago. That’s right. It’s the return of Venusian Amazons Rule the Earth (VARE).

MCC fits VARE well enough. Both are post-apoc science fantasy inspired in part by TSR’s classic Gamma World (about which I’ve written before). My ideas for VARE also draw on Marvel’s awesome Killraven and DC’s even more awesome Kamandi, as well as Thundarr, the Planet of the Apes films, and a variety of pulp stories, perhaps most especially those involving Buck Rogers and John Carter.

(Nota Bene: Links to DriveThruRPG in this post are affiliate links; if you clink and buy, I get a few pennies.)

Some of MCC’s setting assumptions don’t work with VARE. Most significantly, the heroes of VARE do not live in a quasi-Neolithic world built on the remnants of an ancient civilization that commanded technology so advanced that it blurred the lines between science and magic. When the end that was nigh arrived, it was brought not by nuclear war (for example), but instead arrived when Venusian Amazons left their homeworld to conquer our world.

The Venusians Amazons have established military colonies after subjugating humanity via vastly superior Venusian technology. Massive veneriformers work around the clock to alter Earth’s ecosystems to be more comfortable for the Venusian Amazons. Countless humans and native flora and fauna have died. Others have mutated into new, often frightening forms. Human collaborators live in domed communities, protected from the veneriformers’ effects in exchange for unquestioning loyalty to Earth’s alien conquerors.

When planning how to use MCC as the engine for VARE, the first thing that changes regarding character creation relates to level-zero occupations. VARE’s cultures extend beyond MCC’s default Terra A.D. setting. Therefore, my VARE-friendly version of Table 1-2: Character Occupations:

Tags: Gamma World, MCC, VARE

Today I take a break from B/X D&D class creation and leap back over to 5E D&D with an idea about how to introduce some wuxia-inspired martial arts mayhem into the game. Here’re my initial, rough-drafty thoughts.

Step One: Remove the monk as a character class option. No, seriously.

Step Two: Every character class gets proficiency in Strength saving throws and Dexterity saving throws. If a character class already has proficiency in Strength and/or Dexterity saving throws, the character gains Expertise in the saving throw.

Step Three: Choose two skills from Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Insight, Religion, and Stealth. These are additional skills.

Step Four: Add the monk class features listed below to every character class. “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.” Each monk class feature is gained at the normal level as if the character were a monk.

• Unarmored Defense
• Martial Arts
• Ki
• Flurry of Blows
• Patient Defense
• Step of the Wind
• Unarmored Movement
• Deflect Missiles
• Slow Fall
• Extra Attack (unless the character class already has this feature)
• Stunning Strike
• Ki-Empowered Strikes
• Stillness of Mind
• Evasion (unless the character class already has this feature)
• Purity of Body
• Tongue of the Sun and Moon
• Diamond Soul
• Timeless Body
• Empty Body
• Perfect Soul

Step Five: Classes that get to choose a subclass may choose a monk subclass. I guess you could do this for other classes, replacing, for example, a wizard’s Arcane Tradition with a monk subclass.

Step Six: Add Wuxia Movement to the game.

Wuxia Movement: When you take the Move or Dash action, up to half of your movement (round down to nearest 5 feet) ignores difficult terrain or other obstacles so long as you can describe the cool acrobatic moves you make while moving. You can leap over things (no Strength [Athletics] required), run up walls, skip across water, et cetera. When your movement ends, you suffer any negative effects related to terrain, environment, or gravity deemed appropriate. You may also suffer negative effects for doing things like dancing across lava, et cetera. Your Wuxia Movement does not provoke opportunity attacks when you move out of an enemy’s reach (assuming you describe why).

Tags: 5E D&D, Character Classes