Spes Magna Games

Eddie Stanley, the last of ten children, hails from Harris, North Carolina, born there in October 1908. Before he started school, he played music, showing uncanny natural talent as a fiddle plucker. Before his tenth birthday, Eddie switched to guitar and later to a home-made banjo made by him and his brother Ted. Eddie fell in love with banjo. He played parties and school functions as part of various pick-up bands to earn money, giving most of it to his mother but saving enough to buy his first real banjo in 1927. Shortly thereafter, Eddie caught the attention of local radio, and he became a regular on the Crazy Walter Barn Dance radio show. He played with notables such as the Jenkins String Band, backing up Snuffy Jenkins on banjo and his brother Verl Jenkins on fiddle.

Unfortunately, the economic realities of the Great Depression hit the Stanley family hard. After Eddie’s father died in a railroad accident, matters only got worse. Eddie found himself increasingly unable to meet both his obligations as a musician and those related to caring for his mother, who was in poor health. Along the way trying to balance these obligations, Eddie drank too much. When his mother died after a painful struggle against illness, Eddie fell hard. He found himself jobless, homeless, and in trouble with law after seriously injuring a man in a bar fight. Rather than face time in jail, Eddie packed up what few belongings he could carry and simply walked away from it all.

He’s spent the past three years riding the rails, moving mostly up and down the Atlantic coast with occasional jaunts through the Deep South. Eddie makes his living as often as he can through honest work, but he’s not above petty theft, especially when his belt gets a little too loose. His drinking is pretty much under control, and Eddie’s affable nature helps keep him out trouble. Still, life as a hobo isn’t easy, and the recent manifestation of a form of psychic hearing doesn’t help, especially since Eddie often cannot help but hear the complaints and cries of the restless dead.

Strength: 11 (+0)
Dexterity: 16 (+2)
Constitution: 11 (+0)
Intelligence: 13 (+1)
Wisdom: 14 (+1)
Charisma: 16 (+2)

Primes: Dexterity, Wisdom, Charisma
Languages: English, Welsh
Class/Level: Hooligan/1
Hit Points: 6
BtH: +0
Fate Points: 10
Backgrounds: Musician
Traits: Easygoing (+1 to Charisma checks to be friendly, diplomatic, or gain information; -1 to Charisma checks to Intimidate and Wisdom checks to detect falsehoods, lies, or ulterior motives).
Abilities: Case Target (WIS), Climb (DEX), Hide (DEX), Lingo, Listen (WIS), Move Silently (DEX), Open Lock (DEX), Pick Pocket (DEX), Tracking (WIS), Traps (INT), Wild Talent (Clairaudience).

Tags: Amazing Adventures

As previously implied, I recently acquired Amazing Adventures in PDF from Troll Lord Games, and I really like it. I’ve some experience with the d20 System variant at the heart of Amazing Adventures by way of Simon Washbourne’s nifty Wild West RPG Go Fer Yer Gun!. It’s a simple and flexible system, and Amazing Adventures is my top contender for the next game I’m going to run for my twice-monthly group.

By way of learning the system (any system, for that matter), I spend some time making up characters, monsters, et cetera. No better way for me to see the nuts and bolts of a system that to get under the hood, so to speak. To that end, here’s John Jackson:

Born in Galveston, Texas, in March of 1878, John is the third of child born to Hank and Christina Jackson, former slaves and then domestic servants. By the time he was 10, John divided his waking hours between school and work, helping sweep classrooms after school and helping the local milkman with his deliveries before school.

The Galveston of John’s childhood, although segregated, saw little racial strife, at least in the 12th Ward that was John’s home. Everyone there was poor regardless of color. John ran with a gang of white boys, and he was a welcome guest in their homes, and they in his.

Of poor health as a child, John fell under the protection of his two older sisters, using his wits to avoid confrontation when they weren’t around. This changed when an older boy picked a fight with John, punching him in the jaw. When John reported the incident to his grandmother, she told the boy, “John, if you don’t whip him, I shall whip you.” John confronted the older boy and beat him in a fist fight.

At the age of 16, John quit school and started working the local docks. Later he moved to Dallas and spent some time exercising horses at the race track. During this time, he met Lewis Walters, a carriage painter and boxing enthusiast, who took on John as an apprentice. It was Lewis’s influence that led John into becoming a boxer.

By the time John was 18, he was living in Manhattan, training for the ring and working as a janitor for Bernard Hermann, a German-born heavyweight who owned a gym. After a few penny ante fights, usually on beaches or in warehouses, John got his chance to fight professionally in 1898. Thus began John’s highly successful career as a professional boxer, a career that has permitted John to semi-retire from the ring and live a life of privilege and luxury that his parents could have only dreamed of.

In Paris, France, walking back to his hotel late one night in the company of a chanteuse, John witnessed an elderly man being assaulted in an alley. John rushed to the man’s defense, only to find himself in a life-and-death, bare-knuckle struggle against one of the many ghouls that lurk in the Paris catacombs. Although badly injured, John managed to hold off the undead monster long enough for the ruckus to attract the attention of the locals and the police. The monster fled, and John was taken to the hospital.

Confronted with the existence of a chilling world of monsters, John’s life has since moved in new directions. He hopes to find other intrepid persons with similar experiences. If things that go bump in the night are going to prey on innocent people, John figures he needs to bump right back. It’s what his grandmother would want him to do.

Strength: 18 (+3)
Dexterity: 13 (+1)
Constitution: 14 (+1)
Intelligence: 10 (+0)
Wisdom: 13 (+1)
Charisma: 13 (+1)

Primes: Strength, Constitution, Charisma
Languages: English
Class/Level: Pugilist/1
Hit Points: 13
BtH: +0
Fate Points: 10
Backgrounds: Mechanic, Professional Athlete
Traits: Musclebound (+1 STR-based checks, -2 DEX-based checks).
Abilities: Overwhelming Personality (CHA, +2 to CHA-based saves); Tough as Nails (CON, +1 to CON-based saves); Unarmed Attack (1d4).

Tags: Amazing Adventures

I recently rewatched Horror Express. Here’s the monster from that movie imagined as a recurring villain for Amazing Adventures, published by Troll Lord Games.

Chuluurkhag, a nearly immortal alien being, came to our world hundreds of millions of years ago as part of an exploratory mission. Due to circumstances beyond its control, it was left behind when the mission departed. Chuluurkhag used its psychic powers to survive, transferring its consciousness from one primitive life form to another, gradually taking control of more advanced animals until it assumed control of an early hominid, an event that put the alien onto the path toward a human guise. Chuluurkhag’s painfully slow ascent of the evolutionary ladder came to a halt during the last major ice age when it fell into a glacial crevasse. There it remained, trapped in a frozen, dead body in a cave in Manchuria until discovered by Alexander Saxton, a renowned British anthropologist affiliated with the Royal Geological Society.

Chuluurkhag reanimated the thawing body it had been trapped within for centuries. As its strength returned, it used its psychic powers again, transferring its consciousness into a Russian police inspector named Leo Mirov. After this, Chuluurkhag bided its time aboard the Trans-Siberian Express. Still occupying Mirov’s body, Chuluurkhag vanished shortly after arriving in Moscow. Its current whereabouts are unknown, but members of the Brotherhood of William St. John believe that a recent spate of strange murders by dissection in Whitechapel, London, show signs of an alien and malevolent intelligence. Could the Brotherhood have stumbled upon Chuluurkhag?

Chuluurkhag: # Enc 1; SZ as current form; HD as current form; Move as current form; AC as current form; Atk as current form; Special animate dead, drain memory, psychic transfer; Sanity 1/1d4; SV M; Int High; AL LE; Type aberration; XP as current form with one additional Special II ability and two additional Special III abilities.

Animate Dead: Chuluurkhag can animate the corpses of any creature it recently has killed via psychic transfer. This functions as the spell of the same name, except that Chuluurkhag animates one zombie per round it concentrates on the task. Chuluurkhag’s zombies obey its mental commands.

Drain Memory: Chuluurkhag gains the skills of whatever creatures it kills via psychic transfer, and Chuluurkhag has killed many over the millenia. As such, Chuluurkhag can be assumed to have at least a +2 bonus for pretty much any skill check imaginable. At the GM’s discretion, Chuluurkhag’s bonus may be even higher, maybe even as high as +6, especially when it comes to Knowledge skills.

Psychic Transfer: Chuluurkhag properly exists today only as mental energy. As such, it is both limited to the strengths of its current form and nearly impossible to kill. Regardless of form, Chuluurkhag’s main attack is psychic. Any living creature that meets Chuluurkhag’s gaze can be subjected to this attack should Chuluurkhag will it. A saving throw resists the attack, but a new saving throw must be made each time a victim meets Chuluurkhag’s gaze. Failing this saving throw paralyzes the victim as long as Chuluurkhag maintains contact. Each round, the victim loses 1d6 points of Intelligence and Wisdom. If both Intelligence and Wisdom reach 0, the victim dies and Chuluurkhag gains all of the victim’s skills and memories. If it wishes, Chuluurkhag may transfer its consciousness into the victim’s body, animating and using the body as its own.

If Chuluurkhag is reduced to 0 hit points, it abandons its current form and unleashes its full psychic might against the nearest creature within 120 feet. The victim suffers 3d6 points of Intelligence and Wisdom drain. A successful saving throw halves this damage. If this attack reduces the victim’s Intelligence and Wisdom to 0, Chuluurkhag takes control of a new host.

Tags: Amazing Adventures, horror, monsters