Spes Magna Games

One of my goals for Tiamat’s Throne is to provide locations and hooks for just about any type of fantasy or science-fiction game players might want. Adhara is rough-and-tumble world of farmers and anarchist artists with Pre-Rage ruins lost on uncivilized continents. Bellatrix is a hotbed of high-tech corporate intrigue set on cities floating above a waterless, lifeless planet. Castor is a low-tech quarantine world overrun by the undead. The arctic planet Deneb combines corporate oppression, a decadent aristocracy, and caverns full of degenerate outcasts.

Here’s rough-draft text for Adhara:

Population: 657,000
Atmosphere: Breathable but dense. Use those pressure masks!
Climate: Tropical to temperate
Government: Agricultural Republic
Tech Level: 3

Adhara was founded by the Striker Pact, a paramilitary conglomerate that specialized in establishing military outposts for frontier sector security. The planet was nearly ideal for colonization. Its biosphere is human-miscible, but its atmosphere contains unusually high concentrations of gases that make pressure masks necessary for breathing outside environmentally controlled buildings. During the Age of Fire, almost the entire original population of Adhara was killed by the dragons.

Recolonization of Adhara began a few decades before the Age of the Phoenix. Duke Apophis relocated natives of his throneworld Whetu to Adhara. The new Adharans have taken to the planet well-enough. Their tech level is still sub-par, but the reconstruction proceeds nonetheless. Most Adharans work in agribusiness. The planet’s temperate weather and rich soil regularly yield large agricultural surpluses.

Politically, Adharans have divided themselves into three competing republican districts, each one focusing on different crops and related products. These republics are small, and they are clustered on one of Adhara’s smaller continents located in the planet’s southeastern hemisphere. Relations between the republics are generally cordial. Adharans pride themselves on their vibrant interdistrict arts communities. Adharan fine arts can fetch high prices among discriminating collectors on other worlds, and the most successful Adharan artists sometimes go on interplanetary tours.

The vibrant arts communities have proven problematic in the past. Artistic expressions of contempt directed against Apophis and Tiamat resulted in violent reprisals. Since those dark days, Adharan republics have instituted severe restrictions on freedom of expression. Political speech and art is heavily regulated, and the penalties for underground art are particularly harsh. This conflict between a famous cosmopolitan arts culture and repressive controls on artistic expression is a sore spot with many Adharans.

The “art police” lack the personnel and expertise to adequately enforce speech laws in a few economically depressed wards. Radical underground artists run illegal presses and traveling galleries among the underclasses of these areas. Missionary priests associated with the Domini Canes also aid and abet these criminal artists.

Adhara is also a tomb world, a fact of interest to black marketeers as well as Duke Apophis’s agents. Whetu’s draconic master is rumored to maintain a covert force of soldiers, archaeologists, and Pre-Rage specialists on Adhara. These units comb through the blasted ruins on Adhara’s other five continents, seeking to claim whatever Pre-Rage artifacts can be found.

Tags: planetary tour, Tiamat's Throne

I’m gearing up for a new year of Quid Novi?, my (allegedly monthly) newsletter. This is the fourth year I’ve been writing this gaming resource, and I hope to do a better job with it in 2013 than I did in 2012. The focus for Quid Novi? is shifting away from Pathfinder/d20 System to old school RPG clones with special emphasis on Stars Without Number and Swords & Wizardry.

Quid Novi? will feature an assortment of, well, features, including:

* Awful Afflictions: New curses, diseases, and poisons to torture your players’ characters.
* Bazaar of the Bizarre: New items to augment your villains and reward victorious heroes.
* Chance Encounter: New monsters to claw/claw/bite those who try to steal their stuff.
* Treacherous Terrain: New terrains and traps to befuddle your players’ characters.
* Words of Magic: New spells for casters of all classes.
* Recommended Reading: New links to some of the best RPG blogposts I can find.

Subscribers also get a 33% discount on all Spes Magna Games PDFs purchased at Paizo.com. Free subscriptions to Quid Novi? can be processed at this link.

Empathy
Empaths are often viewed with mistrust. Many believe they secretly manipulate the emotions and actions of populations. That Imperial agencies often employ empaths to assist in various functions, including those of the police state, doesn’t help improve empaths’ reputations. A subject who makes a successful Mental Effect saving throw against empathic intrusion becomes immune to that level of empathy for 24 hours, albeit not to other empathic powers of different levels.

Passive Empathy (Level 1)
The empath continually detects emotional “background noise” in a way analogous to how the human ear continually detects ambient sounds. The empath’s sensitivity may permit him to perceive things that others relying on conventional senses would miss. At the GM’s discretion, an empath may be permitted to make a relevant skill check (such as Perception or Tactics to detect an ambush) with a +2 bonus. If the empath chooses not to spend the activation cost after this power triggers, the sense goes numb for the next 24 hours.

Active Empathy (Level 2)
The empath may determine the current emotions, including emotions the target is attempting to suppress. The empath may also project his emotions, including false emotions, into the mind of the target. The target may make a Mental Effect saving throw to prevent empathic projection. On a successful save, the empath can only read current, surface emotions.

Empathic Succor (Level 3)
The empath transfers the target’s stress, fatigue, and wounds to himself with a touch. Each activation heals 2d4 hit points in the target, plus the target’s Constitution modifier. A minimum of 1 hit point is always healed, and the empath cannot give the subject more hit points that his normal maximum. The empath suffers damage equal to half the amount healed to the target, minus the empath’s Constitution modifier. The empath suffers a minimum of 1 hit point damage regardless. Use of this power adds 1 System Strain point to the target.

Limbic Assault (Level 4)
The empath taps into the target’s amygdaloid nucleus and triggers the flight or fight response. If the subject fails a Mental Effect saving throw, he acts as if confronted by a life-and-death peril for 1d4 rounds. The empath cannot control the specific form the target’s response will take.

Empathic Tracking (Level 5)
The empath can gradually expand the radius of his passive empathy in order to locate a target subjected to the empath’s activate empathy within the past psychic’s empathy discipline level in hours. The initial radius equals 10 yards, and the radius doubles each minute of concentration (to a maximum radius of 5,120 yard after 10 rounds of concentration). The target is permitted a Mental Effect saving throw to avoid detection. If detected, the empath knows the approximate direction and distance to the target for the next 1d4 hours.

Emotional Calm (Level 6)
The empath radiates calmness and confidence in a radius equal to 5 feet per empathy discipline level. Everyone within the radius enjoys a +1 bonus to skill checks and attack rolls and a +2 bonus to saving throws against effects that affect the emotions. Emotional calm persists so long as the empath concentrates, an activity which precludes most other actions.

Empathic Projection (Level 7)
The empath can project a single emotion into the target’s mind, causing the target to be overwhelmed by the emotion and to act accordingly. While the empath can choose the emotion to project, he cannot control the target’s specific reaction, which will depend on the target’s experiences, psychology, et cetera. The projection lasts for 2d4 rounds. A successful Mental Effect saving throw by the target resists this power.

Transempathic Succor (Level 8)
The empath transfers stress, fatigue, and wounds from one or more targets to one or more targets, all of whom must be touching. Each activation heals 4d4 hit points in the targets, plus the targets’ Constitution modifiers (applied individually). A minimum of 1 hit point is always healed, and the empath cannot give a subject more hit points that his normal maximum. The damage healed to the targets based on the dice roll is distributed equally among the willing recipients participating in the transempathic succor. Each participant subtracts his Constitution modifier from this damage, but each participant suffers a minimum of 1 hit point damage regardless. Use of this power adds 3 System Strain points to the each healed target.

Moral Dissolution (Level 9)
The empath forces his way into the emotional centers of the target’s psyche and wreaks horrific damage. If the target fails a mental saving throw, he becomes an emotionless shell incapable of meaningful action. The target is permitted a new Mental Saving throw every 1d4 days to overcome the condition. Until he recovers, the victim is so overwhelmed by ennui that he cares for nothing, not even for satisfying his most basic desires for nourishment. This power can be used on a given target only once per 24 hours.

Tags: Stars Without Number, Tiamat's Throne

The badlands world of Rigel presents several challenges to its population. The absence of indigenous life above the microbial level means that food must be either imported from off-world or grown locally from non-native stocks.

Unfortunately, Rigel’s soil is slightly toxic. Elaborate cleansing and filtration systems are necessary to provide potable water and arable land. Rigelian social groups struggle for control of these resources; the losers get a small share to prevent open warfare. The needed resources have become the foundation of the Rigelian monetary system.

Tags: Stars Without Number, Tiamat's Throne

On Elanor, the Eugenics Commissars needed a durable race that could survive underground for long period of times. Gengineering resulted in the malgrandegulos, a stoic race famous for their love of both money and combat. Instability in the malgrandegulos genome has resulted in the speciation of a new race, the koboldo.*

Appearance and Biology: This race tends to be squat, broad, and heavy. Males are seldom taller than 5 feet and weigh on average 150 pounds. Females are somewhat shorter and lighter. A malgrandegulo’s arms reach to just past his knees, and they are usually well-muscled with powerful shoulders. Malgrandegulos tend to have short, bowed legs that cause them to move with a rolling gait. This race tends to be hirsute; facial hair is ubiquitous among males and common among females. Earth tones dominate malgrandegulo eye and hair color, but many malgrandegulos watch their hair go gray to white by middle-age. Skin color ranges from ruddy to bronze.

Psychology: The malgrandegulos share strong common psychological traits that often make them difficult to tolerate. Status among malgrandegulos is almost universally measured by the successful accumulation of wealth and by demonstrated martial prowess. While it might seem as if these traits would lead to widespread double-dealing and violence, the malgrandegulos have learned to hide their true intentions behind facades of bland, patient gentility. A malgrandegulos seldom says what he means. Instead, he remains vague, noncommital. At the same time, he takes stock of what he sees and hears, making careful mental notes about the possible true intentions of others. These elaborate charades of respect and civility between malgrandegulo individuals and groups can go on for months, even years. Then, when the time judged right, the machinations are revealed, and to the victors go the spoils.

While malgrandegulos plot revenge for offenses real or imagined, outright blood feuds are rare. Since status is gained by financial and military success against rivals, malgrandegulo social norms strongly reinforce a stoic attitude about defeat. When one is bested, the sensible thing to do is acknowledge the winner’s superior cunning and strength. Of course, any self-respecting malgrandegulo will also plot ways to get even…eventually.

Flavor: A malgrandegulo is an honorable schemer, and many who manage to leave Elanor for the wider sector find themselves in diplomatic service or public relations. Everyone knows that a malgrandegulo can’t be trusted farther than he can be thrown in normal gravity. At the same time, malgrandegulos tend to excel at saying no more than what needs to be said, if that much.

A malgrandegulo’s love of wealth and martial prowess may also lead him into more aggressive occupations. Companies of malgrandegulo mercenaries tend to be both well payed and feared, and quite a few wealthy people employ malgrandegulo bodyguards. Some companies, especially those involved in the mining industry, recruit and employ malgrandegulos as both workers and security personnel.

Racial Traits: Malgrandegulos move up 45 feet per round (rather than 60 feet). Although slow, a malgrandegulo is built for portage. He can have up to four additional items can be carried ready or eight additional ones stowed at the cost of becoming Lightly Encumbered, and having his base movement slowed from 45 feet per round to 30 feet per round. A further two items can be carried ready or four stowed at the cost of becoming Heavily Encumbered, with base movement then reduced to 15 feet per round.

Malgrandegulos are good at spotting traps, unsafe cave formations, slanting passages, and new construction while underground. Malgrandegulos gain a +1 bonus to Perception skill checks to detect such things. Malgrandegulos use neither magic nor psionics. They are, however, resistant to magic and psionics, gaining a +4 bonus to saves against such effects.

A malgrandegulo’s natural vision is equivalent to low-light goggles. Consequently, malgrandegulos have difficulty with normal levels of illumination. Without protective lenses in such conditions, malgrandegulos suffer a -1 penalty to sight-based Perception skill checks and a -2 penalty to saves against attacks that blind or disorient via bright light.

A malgrandegulo character must have at least a 13 Strength and 13 Constitution, and he cannot have higher than a 14 Charisma. They cannot be wizards or psychics.

* Most koboldo newborns are destroyed at birth, but a substantial number of malgrandegulos have refused to cooperate with imperial racial sanitation codes. As a result, many of Elanor’s deeper subterranean places are infested by koboldos.

Tags: planetary tour, Stars Without Number, Tiamat's Throne