Spes Magna Games

In TSR’s wonderful Masque of the Red Death campaign expansion, we find several character kits, namely Cavalryman, Charlatan, Dandy, Detective, Explorer/Scout, Journalist, Laborer, Medium, Metaphysician, Parson, Physician, Qabalist, Sailor, Scholar, Shaman, and Spiritualist. From Chaosium’s excellent Cthulhu by Gaslight, we expand the Victorian-era background material by including social class (Upper Class, Middle Class, or Lower Class) and several occupations, specifically Adventuress, Aristocrat, Clergyman, Consulting Detective, Ex-Military, Explorer, Inquiry Agent, Official Police, Rogue (not to be confused with the character class), and Street Arab (period slang for Lower Class children “adept at surviving on the street”) (Gaslight, page 12).

Nota Bene: All of the links above are affiliate links. If you click and buy, I get a pittance.

When adapting 5E D&D to the last few decades of the Victorian era, setting-appropriate backgrounds are a must. Let’s take the Adventuress Gaslight occupation and turn it into a 5E D&D background. Direct quotes below come from Gaslight (pages 10-11).

Adventuress

Adventuress is “a euphemism for the woman who, by her association with Upper Class suitors and admirers, managed to gain power, respect, and sometimes reluctant approval from Victorian society. Often the Adventuress has worked in the theater or in some other form of entertainment. Sometimes ruthless, always competent and intelligent, she can greatly influence the life of her suitor of the moment. In fiction, a famous example of an Adventuress is Irene Adler, ‘the woman’ of the Sherlock Holmes Story ‘A Scandal in Bohemia.’ The adventuress may come from any social class. In so far as the behavior of the Middle Classes and Lower Classes directed at her, her effective class standing is that of her current suitor — but only so long as he remains her protector or until her cash runs out. Then her standing reverts to that of her birth. Naturally her protector’s peers always view her in terms of her original social class.”

Proficiencies: 4
Equipment: A set of fine clothes, letters from suitors, a bottle of perfume, and a pouch containing 20 gp

Feature: Name-Dropping: Due to your association with one or more men of repute, people are inclined to treat you with deference. You can gain access to places normally reserved for the Upper Classes. The Middle and Lower Classes make every effort to accommodate you and avoid your displeasure.

And now some notes regarding proficiencies. As touched on in a previous post, tweaking 5E D&D toward the investigative paradigm of The Gumshoe System requires modifying skills. Certain skills become investigative skills, the use of which guarantees discovering clues, assuming the proper skill is used at the proper time. In short, no die roll is required with an investigative skill.

To ensure that an adventuring group has the investigative skills covered means changing the ways a character gains skills. So, for example, instead of a background having a fixed list of skills, tool proficiencies, et cetera, a background provides X number of points that are spent on such things. This increases the amount of customization each character receives and also ensures that no adventuring group can’t find a clue because no member of the group has the applicable skill. I don’t see how either those “ensurances” are a bad thing.

Back to the Adventuress. If I make up a character with this background, I get 4 points I can spend on skills, tool proficiencies, and/or languages. I might decide to spend 2 points on investigative skills, picking Deception and Insight. For the other two, I might choose Performance and proficiency with a disguise kit.

These skills and this tool proficiency would be in addition to those gained from race and class. If my Adventuress were a half-elf rogue, I’d be looking at 2 more points from race and 4 more points from class. All in all, my Adventuress would have an impressive list of investigative and other skills to help her navigate her way through the strange currents of a mystery.

Tags: game play, GUMSHOE, horror

I’ve a confession. I never really cared for Ravenloft, either the classic AD&D module or the setting. To be fair, it probably had more to do with the GMs than the material itself. I understood that Ravenloft adventures were supposed to be scary and suspenseful, but, in my experience, they never were. Ravenloft had its charms, and I like the idea, to be sure, but it never quite clicked for me. Well, never quite clicked for me with one exception: TSR’s wonderful Masque of the Red Death campaign expansion. I only ever played in that setting once or twice, but I enjoyed it. It combined the better elements of AD&D and Call of Cthulhu to craft an intriguing setting.

Before moving on with the further thoughts about Victorian-era Gothic D&D, let’s sum up the conclusion from my last post about using The GUMSHOE System’s concept of investigative skills with 5E D&D.

The GUMSHOE System divides skills into two large group: investigative skills and general. No die roll is ever required to gain information with an investigative skill. If the right skill is applied to the right situation, information is uncovered, and the mystery proceeds apace.

For 5E D&D, the obvious investigative skills are Arcana, Deception, History, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Persuasion, and Religion. That’s ten skills. In an adventuring group, each of the skills should be found among the proficiencies of the characters at least once. This ensures that no clue will go undiscovered because no character has the right skill for the job.

The GUMSHOE System has built into it a limit to how to often investigative skills reveal useful information. In 5E D&D, this same limit can be implemented as X number of uses. I still like the idea of making X equal to the character’s proficiency bonus. Thus, a 1st-level character gets three automatic investigative skill successes. This pool of automatic successes recovers one use after a short rest or all uses after a long rest.

Now for some specifics. In D&D 5E, characters start with at least two skills based on class and probably two other skills from background. If we count tool proficiencies as skills, most characters have at least one more skill. Some have more. For example, a dwarf rogue with the charlatan background starts with a dwarven tool proficiency, stonecunning (a sort of specialized History skill), four class skills, thieves’ tools proficiencies, two background skills, and two background tool proficiencies. If we count most of those as skills, that’s 10 of them (ignoring stonecunning). Change the class to fighter and the character still has seven skills (losing thieves’ tools and two class skills).

Let’s say that we treat the character’s total number of racial, class, and background skills and tool proficiencies as points that can be used to purchase skills and tool proficiencies. Thus, the dwarf rogue (charlatan) gets 10 points. If the character were a right, he’d get seven points. The players and GM make this determination for each of the characters. When selecting skills and tool proficiencies, the top priority is the investigative skills. As mentioned above, each investigative skill must found among the proficiencies of at least one character. Duplicates are fine, of course. Once the ten investigative skills have been accounted for, the players get to spend their remaining skill points on whatever skills and tool proficiencies make sense for their respective characters’ classes and background.

Back to Masque of the Red Death. In that setting, dedicated spellcasters such as clerics and wizards aren’t really a thing. Spellcasting ability is sharply curtailed, and the variety of spells is limited as well. Non-human player character races are also rare if allowed at all. For now, I’m ignoring those aspects, and I’ll likely continue to ignore the limited race selection, mainly because I’m fascinated by the idea that the British Isles are ruled by high elves while France is ruled by drow under the iron fist of their Moon Queen.

What probably merits adapting to 5E D&D are the character kits. For those unfamiliar with 2E AD&D, a character kit is sort of like a 5E D&D background, and turning the Masque kits into backgrounds ought not be too difficult. The kits that would need backgrounding are Cavalryman, Charlatan, Dandy, Detective, Explorer/Scout, Journalist, Laborer, Medium, Metaphysician, Parson, Physician, Qabalist, Sailor, Scholar, Shaman, and Spiritualist. Some of these already appear 5E D&D (such as Charlatan and Sailor), but they might need tweaking to fit the late 19th century Victorian millieu of the Masque.

Of course, no foray into Victorian-era Gothic horror can ignore Chaosium’s excellent Cthulhu by Gaslight. From this fine book, I’m reminded of the importance social class had in the era. Characters are Upper Class, Middle Class, or Lower Class. Occupation is the main factor for determining social class, which in 5E D&D terms means sorting backgrounds by social class. For example, a Laborer is very unlikely to be Upper Class (or even Middle Class). Gaslight offers new occupations specific to its setting: Adventuress, Aristocrat, Clergyman, Consulting Detective, Ex-Military, Explorer, Inquiry Agent, Official Police, Rogue (not to be confused with the character class), and Street Arab (period slang for Lower Class children “adept at surviving on the street”) (Gaslight, page 12). Some of those occupations repeat character kits (i.e., Parson and Clergyman). Even after eliminating repeats, that leaves an impressive list of setting/genre-appropriate backgrounds.

Nota Bene: All of the links above are affiliate links. If you click and buy, I get a pittance.

Tags: game play, GUMSHOE, horror

With my older group of student-players in the gaming club I facilitate whereat I teach, we recently started a sort of mash-up of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (from 1986) and basic D&D. I’ve got three 8th graders involved. All three made up elves with the Career Classes of Ranger, Rogue, and Academic. Their starting basic careers are Fisherman, Hypnotist, and Thief. The trio of elves left Albion aboard the Fisherman’s boat and made their way to the land of humans, eventually arriving at Nuln. Good times.

For those unfamilar with Warhammer‘s Old World setting, it is analogous to late-medieval/early-Renaissance western Europe in many ways. It’s a very human-centric setting. Elves in particular are rather rare, which makes the student-players’ characters something noteworthy in the cobbled streets of Nuln. Typical fantasy races such as dwarves, halflings, orcs, goblins, et cetera exist in the Old World. So too do more monstrous creatures like ogres, giant scorpions, and what not. Back when I played Warhammer while stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, our games seldom involved more exotic monsters. The weirdest we encountered were the undead. Demons, devils, intelligent slimes, and what not never showed up.

In Warhammer, the other-worldliness of certain creatures results in those creatures causing Fear or Terror, which is a lot like Fear but also causes lasting psychological damage. For example, a Manticore causes “fear in living creatures under 10 feet tall.” In contrast, a mummy invokes fear in all living creatures, but causes “terror in living creatures under 10 feet tall.” Even the (in D&D terms) relative mundane undead skeleton causes fear in living creatures. In short, the idea that certain creatures are so fearsome and/or so unnatural that the characters’ minds rebel against their very presence is baked into the Warhammer world.

This sort of baking is not part and parcel of D&D. Even 1st-level characters may face a squad of undead skeletons with no more rules-induced trepidation than they’d experience facing the same number of bandits. Within the reality of the “standard” D&D game-world, walking skeletons are no more unnerving psychologically than walking people. There’s nothing wrong with this, unless you want their to be something wrong with it.

Let’s consider fear conditions for 5E D&D that work in a way inspired by Warhammer, and apply those conditions to encounters with undead of any sort. In 5E, the only condition related to fear is frightened. It’s a sort of one-size scares all condition. Moving back a couple of E’s, we find in the d20 System four fear-related conditions: shaken, frightened, panicked, and cowering (in order from least to most severe). I like these, but they’ll need to tweaked to fit 5E.

A brief digression into the 5E version of exhaustion gives me an idea. The condition of exhaustion in 5E has six levels, each one imposing a certain limitation. A character with one level of exhaustion has disadvantage on ability checks. With two levels, he has disadvantage on ability checks and moves at half speed. And so on. Fear conditions could work in a similar manner. A character with one level of fright is shaken, with two levels is frightened, et cetera.

Now I just need to decide on what each level of fright does. Since frightened is already a 5E condition, that might work as a sort of baseline. Shaken would be less severe than frightened. Panicked and cowering would be more severe. After some pondering, here’s what I came up with:

Shaken: A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.

Frightened: A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight. The creature can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear.

Panicked: A panicked creature drops anything it holds and flese at top speed from the source of its fear, as well as any other dangers it encounters, along a random path. It can’t use the attack action. In addition, the panicked creature has disadvantage on ability checks. If cornered, a panicked creature cowers. A panicked creature can use special abilities, including spells, to flee; indeed, the panicked creature must use such means if they are the only way to escape.

Cowering: A cowering creature is incapacitated, meaning the creature can’t take actions or reactions. Also, the cowering creature can’t move, and it can speak (or scream or sob) only falteringly. The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.

Most undead creatures cause Fear. More powerful undead cause Terror. In either case, the victim gets a Will saving throw to resist the effect. Set the DC as appropriate for the creature’s CR. All that is required for the saving throw to trigger is line of sight to the monster, at least in most cases. For weaker undead, it might be reasonable to only require the Will saving throw when the undead attacks. For undead that cause Fear, failing the saving throw imposes one level of fright, which means the character would be Shaken most of the time. Terror is more serious. If the saving throw against Terror fails by 5 or more, the victim receives two levels of fright, which means becoming Frightened at a minimum. In any case, at the end of its turn, the victim of fear is permitted another Will saving throw. If successful, the creature’s fright level is reduced by one level.

As Kelly Bundy says, “Viola!” With rules like these, I’ve taken the first step toward creating a world in which unnatural foes such as the undead are not only frightening in concept but also pose psychological risks, at least in the short term. For more horror, I could put into play the rules related to sanity loss found in the 5E DMG, attaching those rules to encounters with Terror-inducing monsters and/or against characters who reach Panicked or Cowering levels of fright.

Good times.

Tags: 5E D&D, horror, monsters, Warhammer

I started watching season one of Cleverman on Netflix. I’m two episodes in, and it’s pretty good. Australian history and mythology blend with science-fiction, dystopia, and a bit of horror. Central to the story are the Hairypeople (or Hairies), a non-human humanoid people who entered the “real world” from the Dreaming on what is called Emergence Day.

The Hairies are drawn from Australian mythology, such as from the Gamilaraay and Bundjalung peoples. Stronger and faster than humans, heavy facial and body hair cover Hairies, who also have thick, almost talon-like fingernails as well as brightly colored eyes. A Hairy is sufficiently human in appearance to pass as human with shaving, nail-trimming, and the wearing of tinted contact lenses.

Of course, watching the first two episodes this week reminded me of Chaosium’s Terror Australis for Call of Cthulhu. So, with that in mind, here are the Hairyfolk. (N.B. Those previous two links are affiliate links.)

Hairypeople (Lesser Independent Race)

STR 3d6+6 (16-17)
CON 3d6+3 (13-14)
SIZ 2d6+6 (13)
INT 2d6+6 (13)
POW 3d6+3 (13-14)
DEX 3d6+6 (16-17)
APP 3d6 (10-11)
Hit Points 15-16
Move 10

Weapon (Attack %, Damage)
Fist/Punch (50%, 1d3+1d4)
Kick (25%, 1d6+1d4)
Nails (35%, 1d4+1d4)

Armor 1 point of skin and hair
Spells Hairyfolk with a POW of 14 or more will know spells at the discretion of the Keeper. At least 1d4 spells will be known by such exceptional Hairyfolk.
Skills Climb 55%, Hide 25%, Jump 40%, Listen 35%, Sing 25%, Sneak 25%, Spot Hidden 35%, Swim 55%, Throw 30%, Track 35%
SAN None

Tags: Call of Cthulhu, horror, monsters

Event Horizon arrived yesterday. By John Reyst and Johua De Santo, this 59-page introductory adventure for White Star takes that game system into the realm of space horror, a genre that I’ve dug since seeing Alien in the theater way back in 1979.

I read the adventure last night. It hits many of the high points of space horror, and presents some really interesting gaming possibilities related to sanity (Sanity Events) and becoming unmoored in space-time (Time Dilation). Sanity Events come into two sizes: Minor and Major. The precise descriptions of Sanity Events are largely left up the GM. The module offers some suggestions to get the imagination working.

In game terms, Sanity Events cause a reduction of Wisdom. If Wisdom gets too low, the affected character becomes a dangerously unstable NPC. Time Dilation events unstick one or more characters from their present time and/or location. For example, a character may “flashback” to an earlier scene in the adventure or “jump” forward in time to experience something that might happen. Like with Sanity Events, examples and advice about Time Dilation effects appear throughout the module.

Without going into too much more detail about the adventure itself, it’s noteworthy that the scenario starts with new characters waking up from cryosleep after Bad Things have happened near a black hole. Event Horizon is a race against time that draws on elements from Alien, Pandorum, and the movie Event Horizon, among others. The characters must beat the clock, repairing their ship before it gets either sucked into a black hole or destroyed by alien invaders.

At first glance, Event Horizon is an attractive book. The cover and interior artwork is well-done, except for the pictures of the aliens, which still aren’t horrible. My aged eyes appreciate the single-column layout without obscuring background art or funky colors. I’d have used a different font for the headers, however; the header font in the book tricked my eyes into misreading a few words.

Similarly, while the ship’s maps are well done, the nebula background behind the maps is pretty but unnecessary, and the maps perhaps could been a bit larger. I found myself squinting at them, especially on the lower and middle deck maps where numbers appear in black over dark grey shading. In the main body of the adventure, italics are used to denote descriptive, read-aloud text, and these sections tend to blend into the main text. Boxed text or different spacing would have helped.

Most distracting, however, are the tables. Their layout is quirky, and some of the time text is missing. Table 5, for example, which uses 1d6, has results for 1, “3 thru 5”, and 6. Nothing for the number 2. (See the pic to right.) These details don’t ruin the look of Event Horizon, but they do distract from it as well as slightly muck up the coherence of the text.

All in all, however, I like Event Horizon, and I want to give it a run. I’d probably use Stars Without Number rather than White Star, since I prefer to form to the latter for sci-fi/space gaming, and that’s another selling point in favor of Event Horizon. It’s for White Star, but it’s still generic enough that Event Horizon would work well with just about old-school game.

Kudos to the d20pfsrd Publishing team!

And now, as promised, the twin heroes Hunapu and Xbalanque converted the AD&D Deities & Demigods for use with 5E D&D.

Hunapu and Xbalanque were conceived when their mother Xquic, daughter of one of the lords of Xibalba, the rulers of the land of the dead, spoke with the severed head Hun, Xquic’s dead husband. The skull spat in Xquic’s hand, and the twins were conceived in her womb. Hunapu and Xbalanque are great adventurers and resolute foes of demons and the undead. Both men love games, especially competitive sports.

Hunapu & Xbalanque
Medium humanoid (human), lawful good

Armor Class 14 (20 with barkskin)
Hit Points 153 (18d8+72)
Speed 30 ft.
Ability Scores STR 22 (+6), DEX 18 (+4), CON 18 (+4), INT 16 (+3), WIS 12 (+1), CHA 18 (+4)

Saving Throws Strength +10, Dexterity +8, Intelligence +7, Wisdom +5
Skills Athletics +10, Investigation +11, Insight +9, Medicine +9, Perception +9, Survival +9
Damage Resistances cold, fire
Senses passive Perception 19
Languages Abyssal, Common, Infernal, Sylvan
Challenge 11 (7,200 XP)

Clever Minds. The twins make Intelligence and Wisdom saving throws with advantage. Their proficiency bonus for Intelligence and Wisdom skills is doubled.

Favored Enemies. The twins have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track fiends and undead. The twins also have advantage of Intelligence checks to recall information about fiends and undead.

Innate Spellcasting. Hunapu’s and Xbalanque’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 16). They can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components:

1/day each: barkskin, call lightning, divination, freedom of movement, plant growth, spider climb

Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If either of the twins fails a saving throw, he can choose to succeed instead.

Magical Weapons. Hunapu’s and Xbalanque’s weapon attacks are magical.

Spellcasting. Hunapu and Xbalanque are 10th-level spellcasters. Their spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 15, +7 to hit with spell attacks). They prepare spells from the druid and wizard spell lists, gaining the latter without need of a spellbook. Neither twin can prepare 5th-level wizard spells, but either may use a 5th-level slot to cast a lower level wizard spell. They have the following spells prepared:

Hunapu

Cantrips (at will): druidcraft, fire bolt, message, produce flame
1st level (4 slots): charm person, cure wounds, disguise self, jump
2nd level (3 slots): darkvision, pass without trace, phantasmal force
3rd level (3 slots): conjure animals, dispel magic, slow
4th level (3 slots): grasping vine, polymorph
5th level (2 slots): tree stride

Xbalanque

Cantrips (at will): guidance, message, prestidigitation, shocking grasp
1st level (4 slots): burning hands, cure wounds, grease, longstrider
2nd level (3 slots): blur, darkvision, spike growth
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell, haste, speak with plants
4th level (3 slots): conjure woodland beings, polymorph
5th level (2 slots): wall of stone

Wild Shape (2/Day). As a bonus action, a twin can magically assume the shape of a beast that has a challenge rating of 1 or lower that the twin has seen before. The twin can stay in a beast shape for 5 hours. He then reverts to his normal form unless he expends another use of this feature. He can revert to your normal form earlier by using a bonus action on your turn. He automatically reverts if he falls unconscious, drops to 0 hit points, or dies. While in beast form, the twins attacks count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

Actions

Multiattack. A twin makes three hand axe attacks, or one ranged weapon attack with a blowgun.

Hand Axe. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (1d6+6) slashing damage.

Blowgun. Ranged Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, ranged 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d4+4) piercing damage plus 21 (6d6) poison damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 17 Constitution saving throw or become poisoned for 1 minute. A target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Reactions

Foe Slayer. When a fiend or undead creature within 5 feet of a twin hits or misses a twin with an attack, either twin can use his reaction to attack that creature immediately after its attack, provided the twin can see the creature.

Legendary Actions

Both Hunapu and Xbalanque can take 3 legendary actions each, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary option can be used at time and only at the end of another creature’s turn. The twins regain spent legendary actions at the start of their respective turns.

Detect. The twin makes a Wisdom (Perception) check or a Wisdom (Insight) check.

Move. The twin moves up to half his speed without provoking opportunity attacks.

Tackle. The twin makes a Strength (Athletics) check against an adjacent creature contested by the creature’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If the twin wins the contest, he either knocks the target prone or pushes it 5 feet away from him. In either case, the target takes 8 (1d4+6) bludgeoning damage.

Tags: 5E D&D, Deities & Demigods, horror, NPCs, reviews