HMS Apollyon Viking Character Generation Rules

Below are some rules I wrote up to run Viking seafarers in the HMS Apollyon setting to run some one shots of a few new areas.  A friend ran a game at NTRPG Con using these rules and related WWII Commando Character Generation Rules and reported success. I think they make a nice enough distillation of my current rule system and provide a nice means of character generation.  A Character sheet is also included.  For further explanations of rules and things you might find this Players Guide for Combat and Exploration helpful as well.

VIKING CHARACTER GENERATION

I have no justification for using this illustration

The Karve was a ghostly shape in the sea mist when Thorgest the Foul and his men reached the black pebble beach, and his screaming red face was the last you saw of the cold fjords at Hornstrandir as the clansfolk who had survived the hall burning rowed hard into the tide.  Rowing West and South you intended on reaching Reykjavík or Ireland for supplies.  The sea had different plans, and after three days of storm, buffeted by waves and lashed by rain, the Karve was far to the West, beyond the known sea, and the supplies already stretched.  You’ve sailed now for a week more, two men dead from wounds gone rotten, another lost over the side, and even with the storm the water is almost gone again.

Doldrums, a crew too exhausted and hungry to row more than a few hours and no sun to act as a guide in the heavy fog seem to have written a grim end for you and your people. But the fog breaks, orange light trickles in and in the near distance a cliff of metal looms.  A cliff that seems to float like a great ship, sides encrusted with shell and trailing weed, but beneath black plates, smooth like the toenails of dead giants.  It is Naglfar, but there are no choices - go aboard and be damned or die of thirst and sink into Hel.

THE ALTERED DREAMS OF REGIMUND CRUFT

Reginald Cruft, my player character in Ben L’s Dreamlands game is a 19th century American veteran of Union side of the US Civil War, and by 1885 a 47 year old failed medical student and raving drug addict.  In his delirious and debauched state he has dreams, and these dreams have recently been very consistent - they have been of the Dreamlands. In the Dreamlands Cruft is a wizard, capable of some minor feats of charm and mesmerism (though at second level he has the spells “Charm Person, Sleep and Enlrage/Reduce - the last being hard for him to justify as mere mesmerism).

Below is a table for the effects of the various overdoses that push Cruft into the Dreamlands and how they change him during his travels there.  Presumably when Cruft dies in the Dreamlands, his body, wracked with overdose, will be found in his filthy New York garret or a dingy go down opium den.

D12	Drug of Choice	Dreamlands Side Effects
1	Morphine	Stronger and faster, harder in every way, a jarring transition from the waking world to the Dream. Within everything feels heavy and slow, a molasses of impossibility.  Dreamer will act last in party initiative order regardless of action for the rest of the session.
2	Taking the Cure	Painful body wrecking withdrawal symptoms. All Physical stats reduced by 3 for the session and spell slots reduced by 1 (highest level spell).
3	Raw Corn Spirits	Cheap searing alcohol in grand draughts leaves the dreamer with guts like water and a susceptibility to the slightest pain, body running with sweats.  For the rest of the session any blow to the dreamer will stun him or her for a round in addition to doing damage.
4	Cocaine Lozenges	Fractured and jangling, the good feeling of the waking world crumbles into totten bone and a searing pain behind the eyes, leaving the dreamer irritable and suggestible (-2 to all saves v. spells or paralysis) for the session.
5	Fly Agaric	It’s hard to know where the visions ended and the Dream began, but while the ‘real’ occasionally flashes back into the dream in the form of remembered faces, and glimpses of a dusty window, there’s no effect on the Dreamer’s functionality.
6	Nutmeg	The sailor's’ consolation, a gut ripping glass of nutmeg tea causes pleasant enough dreams after the vomiting subsides.  Within the Dreamlands, the sense of smell seems stronger.
7	Opium	The pestilential pipe, a daily pleasure, provides for a swift transport and brightly colored experience in the land of Dreams.
8	Gassy Lager	Despite a certain thickness of the tongue and a tendency towards flatulence the side effects of this tipple are limited, though everything in the Dreamlands resembles a cartoon version of itself from the pages of a cheap pamphlet.
9	McMunn's Elixir of Opium	Patent medicine for the toothache and the cramp, but to those in the know it’s a fine tincture of opium, and smoother than the raw stuff. The shift from waking body to dream body is smoother to, making the dreamers body a closer approximation of the ideal then the actual and providing +1 HP per Hit Die for the session.
10	Hashish	A dream within the dream, spaces retreating fractal and numberless, the mind of the Dreamer is open to possibility and may cast and memorize spells as if one level higher.
11	Whiskey	A good night drinking bonded rye whiskey lead to riotous dreams of superiority.  Dreamer’s melee attacks are at +1 hit.
12	Conditional Sobriety	Unable to soothe his fevered mind with more than a few scrapings of a pipe or the last finger of whiskey or two, the Dreamer has staved off withdrawal sickness, but is still sweating and paranoid.  Falling to sleep while cooing over a loaded 1851 Colt Naval revolver.  The revolver has slid into the Dreamlands, a weapon that may be used in two ear shattering fusillades before exhausting its ammo. It will fade after one session should the dreamer remain in the Dreamlands. 1851 Naval Colt: ATK as Explosive/AOE - Explosion Value 2 - Damage 1D8, may cause morale check, random encounter check.

Funnel Equipment Lists for Fallen Empire's Desolation of Zubrab

FALLEN EMPIRE
ON THE PATH TO ADVENTURE

PDF OF WITH LISTS HERE

The Fallen Empire is a place where the lives of the citizenry are constant hostage to contingency.  No day goes by without rapacious tax assessors turning a village into desolation ready for sale to outside interests, a sink beast surging up and invading a nearby croft, or that the simmering conflict between two ancient houses is finally settled in a bacchanal of slaughter.  The survivors of these tragedies, insignificant to the callous and exhausted powers of the world, find themselves without sustenance, support or succor in a time where the oppression of time and the past means that even compassion has guttered down to the barest coals.  Some die. Most suffer and then die.  A few survive, and the rarest prosper.

Those individuals that are able to withstand the buffets of ill fortune mostly become treasure hunters, grave robbers, and mercenary agents.  Guides, wildmen, spies, travelers, chroniclers, prophets and reavers - adventures, starting from nothing these men and women shift and bully the Empire’s somnolent powers, dusty mores and resigned masses, carving themselves places of note. 

Before riding a wave of blood, magic, fire and cunning to wealth and power all adventurers were something else – usually something contemptible and piteous.  To start an adventurer on their path to death or glory roll 3D6 once for each of the following stats: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma.  If the score is 5 or under the adventurer has a -1 in that statistic, fifteen of over it’s a +1.  Strength grants a bonus or penalty to melee damage and to hit. Intelligence a +1 or -1 to initiative, Wisdom to Saving Throws, Dexterity to Armor Class, Constitution to Hit Points on a per die basis, and

Equipment in the PDF below  is defined by the region and past of the adventurer, with  several potential tables to determine starting equipment and past for adventurers in the regions around the Desolation of Zubrab – The Pyre Sea, The Pyre Coast, Provence Maritime, and Green Hive Canton.

PDF OF EQUIPMENT LISTS

HMS Apollyon - Player Introduction from Player Guide

The gates of the Bleeding Gaol opened, and the stiffness from your cramped confinement, the chaffing from the fetters and the psychic scars of darkness and uncertainty has finally left you over the last day or two.  Now there is only the Rustgates and the near certainty of a bad death.

You were born and raised among the stews and fleshpots of the Cannery, Pickbone Square, The Pool or even the Sun Rookery, but that hardly matters now.  Likewise, the pleasures and pains of the life you lived there are all just memories - that you were the shift leader on the can line, or the fastest scrivener in the factor house is as immaterial as if you were the worst copyist in the Queen’s Scriptorium or a lay-about Vory thug who never managed to savvy The Code.  Whatever you were is stripped away by the brand of ‘flotsam’ on your right wrist, and whatever you did to get here matters little.  Even guilt and innocence are unimportant, as only social status offers survival in Sterntown: access to food, protection from arbitrary violence, the freedom to move about town, availability of shelter, and the right to purchase proper supplies and equipment all depend on who you know and who finds you useful.  Even if you once were, you sentence means that you must again prove your value to self-interested and capricious judges.  You are an exile, a criminal, and outcast so  it’s your lot to live the rest of your days in the festering favelas and dense scaffold slums of the Rustgate, where you can either die or  find a thin accommodation with survival by pulling treasures from the haunted hull.

THE RUSTGATES

The Rustgates - almost accurate map of street level

The Rustgates are a small, even more densely populated area of the already cramped Stern.  Like all “decks” of the Apollyon they consist of a series of 100’ tall vaults of green-black orichalcum – unworkable “ship metal” formed by the long lost technology of the builders before the great marooning.  Unlike some other areas of the vessel, the Rustgate (and most of Sterntown) contain few orderly sublevels and whatever cabins, gangways and working spaces they once held have been ripped out, their stone, steel and wood repurposed to build a sprawl of scaffolding, balconies, poorly ventilated tenements, storefront shrines, bars, burlesque houses, gambling dens, fighting pits, noodle shops and flop houses. 

While at the deck level there is some semblance of a street, only on the “Golden Way” running in front of the great Gilded Exile Burlesque House do these streets reach from the metal of the lowest deck to the buttresses of the ceiling.  The majority of the space within the vault that makes up the Rustgates is tangle of buildings, shacks and scaffolding piled atop each other, forming a crazy web of shanties and hovels above the more prosaic buildings below.  

The principal industries of the Rustgates are vice and scavenging from the hull, and the powers of Sterntown profit from it anarchy and hidden order as the Rustgates provide an influx of treasure and raw materials from the rest of the hull that Sterntown’s industry and luxury both depend on, while also offering a productive way to dispose of citizens who defy, disrupt, question or inconvenience them.

The population of the Rustgates is truly made up of the vessel’s lowest and unluckiest.  Factorial workers maimed by machinery and cast out of the grim, tidy tenements of neighborhoods like Pickbone Square, and every other variety of madman, cripple and urchin.  Gangs of feral urchins (widely believed to be cannibal) nest high above the streets in the blower ducts and descend to rob, kill and run confidence games on the slightly less impoverished  denizens of the Rustgate’s lower levels.  Scavenging, trading in scavenged goods, and sybaritic entertainment are the only jobs within the Gates, and except for those too far gone to injury, madness or addicition the community’s leaders expect everyone in the Gates to work or starve.  The Gates principle factions control all life, and a longtime resident who offends the gangster “block captain”, the Steward thug,  or even the street preacher of Lyriss, may suddenly find themselves going hungry as even the stand where they’ve bought kelp and dried fish for ten years turns them away.  Only the three public fountains, great stone pools surrounded by chipped, hull-plundered statuary, whose faces have been re-carved many times to honor entire lineages of Uptown philanthropists are open to all and provide clean water and a sort of watering hole sanctuary to all. 

The incredible density of life in the Rustgates allows about eight thousand residents to be crammed into a space that is about two city blocks square, but built up in an overlapping mass of stories and half stories as high as a ten story building.  Like almost all of Sterntown it is lit only by artificial light, mostly by dim bluish gas lamps fueled by decaying waste piped from processing centers on the level above.  Private light sources are common as well, from the stub of tallow candles used by the beggars and addicts to light their pleading faces to the strings and bouquets of gay multi-colored glow kelp bulbs that advertise even the dingiest dive bar or knocking shop.

The Golden Way, the short ‘U’ shaped street that runs from the Rust Gate fortifications past the Gilded Exile Burlesque House and to the gates of the Bleeding Gaol is the most brightly lit, busiest and safest spot in the Rust Gates. Uniformed and relatively polite Steward gendarmes patrol the Golden Way’s starboard arm, while clusters of nattily, even foppishly, dressed syndicators openly bearing advanced weaponry such as block magazine rifles and drum feed, self-cocking arbalests.  The street is lined on all sides by theaters, gin palaces and fancy brothels and designed to appeal to both the most successful of scavengers and the wealthy Passengers who flock to its ‘seedy delights’.

Fallen Empire - The Imperial Cult, New Class and Spell lists

PRIEST/PRIESTESS OF THE IMPERIAL CULT 

Below is a new sub-class of Cleric I have been preparing for my Fallen Empire setting, it's an evolution (perhaps the final one) of the 'casting die' based spell mechanics that started with animal shaman in the Pahvelorn campaign and which I currently use for some clerics in HMS Apollyon. I generally like this system for divine magic as it makes it unpredictible and strange without adding too many new rules.  It also allows player imagination to expand the spell list by inventing new patrons, which makes it potentially very fun for players who enjoy world building and setting immersion. A PDF of the class can be found HERE.

Within the Successor Empire there is only one religion of power, the Imperial cult stands alone and falsely claims a spiritual unification.  The Cult’s claim is disingenuous as it has birthed a thousand little schisms, divergent traditions, and is big or vacuous enough to contain almost any beliefs.  The Cult worships the Emperor, and while the qualities of the imbecilic Zeno the 14^th, current and 754^th Emperor (210^th of the Successor dynasty), do not lend themselves to worship even his devotees receive mystical power from their belief.  There are hundreds of other Imperial Emperor Saints that also grant power, and many of them conceal the syncretic adaptations of other conquered religions, often worshiped under multiple names.

The spirits of individual emperors offer their devotees unique powers based on a special religious portfolio, and while most priests limit themselves to one or two preferred saints, a few of the most powerful, half saint themselves, can channel many different divine spirits.  However, even these greatest of holy men and women can only call upon one power at a time and must wear the correct panoply to do so.

HMS Apollyon Player's Manual - Alchemist Subclass

Alchemy

The practice of Alchemy is at once one of both the most practical and the most mystical of the schools of magic.  A rigorous academic study Alchemy seeks to transform and modify the objects and elements of the everyday world (as opposed to controlling, binding and allying with their essences – the goal of elementalism)  for the benefit of the Alchemist’s individual body and soul as well as the creation of the “Magnum Opus”, a great work, most often an artifact of great power: The philosopher’s stone, offering eternal life, the universal solvent, capable of dissolving the bonds of magic and reality or Azoth, a universal medicine capable of raising the dead and curing any ailment.

Beside their contributions to the great work, Alchemists practice a form of magic less dependent on syphoning power directly from ley-lines or their own will and capable of using less power to gain similar effects by magically altering everyday objects.  Where an elementalist would bind a fragment of fire to an enemy causing him to burst into flame, and an thaumaturge lash out with a hard won tendril of pure unreality as a weapon, an alchemist will fling a specially enchanted dagger or sling bullet that seeks out and strikes the target (perhaps triggering some sort of chemical combustion reaction on impact).  As a result of the importance of mundane items in their work, Alchemists have many useful skills related to machinery, poisons and technology.  The Alchemist’s practicality is often lampooned by other magic PR actioners, and the caricature of an Alchemist, crushed under the burdens of his tinker’s tools, engineer’s kit, chemist’s glasses and disorganized research notes is a stock one amongst the schools of academic magic, mocking those with lesser talent for wielding raw power  but perhaps greater adaptability and genius.  It is a rare group of scavengers that doesn’t prize an Alchemist’s presence as his magic is no less effective for being tied to mundane objects and his broad knowledge of the sciences is often proves more helpful at avoiding danger then the puissance of a more focused sorcerer.

Again with far more legible PDF

Starting Minor Magical Items For Darkly Haunted Noble Characters

THE TRUMPET UNBLOWN

A List of unique starting magical items for noble characters in my (admittedly underdeveloped) Fallen Empire setting.  Alternatively I suppose these are the minor items one finds in the crumbled ruins of decadent high-magic mansion, where thousands of years of ease and glory have given way to rot and rodents.

Your house has fallen, not once, not even twice, but like a tottering drunk, tumbling endlessly, colliding with fixed obstacles, cowering from imagined enemies and unprepared to face tomorrow.  Why do you alone see it? Your elders, the family head, the old retainers, the children, and even your peers are blind, wrapped up in false glories and an imagined past. While they sit in dark worm eaten parlors, clutching the greasy and threadbare arms of their patched tapestried thrones and waiting for the Empire’s return to fortune, you have calmly laid out the need for change.  Over meals of what were once decorative carp but are now your rubbery repast carved up on golden plates, you have shouted and raved for action.  In the mossy dripping blackness of the overgrown topiary garden you’ve intrigued and schemed.   

Your efforts have come to naught, your warnings, your rumor mongering, your pleas and prayers cannot move the fixed inertia of a Millennium's propriety and tradition.  Now there is only flight, clutching poorly prepared supplies and rushing for the unknown world beyond the mansions and spires.

Note the illustration are from a 1940's edition of Wuthering Heights (If the swarthy gentleman digging up a grave marked Catherine didn't clue you in.)

Undead as a Playable Class - HMS APOLLYON Player's Guide

A play generated race/class for my HMS Apollyon game - the creepy mostly undead Draugr.  This class is the result of a party of adventurers undertaking a mission on behalf of a lunatic lich they met and befriended within the hull.  In exchange for wealth and magic the party smuggled a pair of the necromancer's "children" into Sterntown, allegedly for the edification and education of these undead thralls. 

LINK TO PDF

The Draugr

There is no crime in Sterntown greater than the practice of Necromancy.  While murder, theft, racketeering and fraud are all conditional, depending on the victim and the perpetrator, necromancy is forbidden to all and punished harshly with mutilation, exile and death.  The reason for this draconian rule rises from the history and fears of Sterntowners, both the Upper Deck’s elite and the masses of crew struggling to survive in the ship’s rusting bowels.   The risen dead a force to be feared aboard the Apollyon: The Ash Plague and its Ghoul Kings, the spirits of Sterntown’s unquiet dead and even the revenants that rise unintelligent and obsessed from  bodies left to rot in the cursed waters within the ship’s hold.  All undead are dangerous, and over the ages they have tirelessly worn down humanity’s hold on the vessel.  The War Amidship and retreat to Sterntown is still a fresh memory, with its loss of most human industrial capacity, the decimation of the Marines and the deaths of at least 60% of the population, but it is only the most recent victory in a slow war between living and dead.

Yet necromancy has a long history amongst Sterntown’s magic practioners, and was one of the most widely practiced magical arts amongst the sorcerous class when the ship was lost, before the Passenger cabals arose blending their blood with that of strange outsider entities to assure their progenies’ magical potency.  Some echoes of these times remain and there are still necromancers hidden amongst all classes in Sterntown, as the art is both easy and seductive compared to some other forms of magic.  These renegade necromancers create servants, but are careful to hide their existence; each necromancer thinking they are clever enough to avoid detection and gain power as the madness of their craft slowly takes hold.  Likewise the Ash Plague does not rest, and amongst its Kings and Queens the more sane and crafty have raised spies, assassins and agents that can easily pass for living men and women.

These undead parodies of life, whether agents of the Ash Plague, servants of hidden magus’, or undead thralls who have slipped their bonds and outlived their masters are known as Draugr, and exist hidden amongst the population of Sterntown, concealing their nature and eking out a marginal existence.  Many of these dead find their way into Scavenging gangs, as their natural abilities make them useful for dealing with other undead and the largely unregulated world of scavenging provides a chance to avoid official scrutiny, explain their odd appearances (scavengers always end up a bit off, being exposed to the horrors of the hull), and potentially contact their handlers amongst the Ash Plague.

HMS Apollyon - Necromancer Subclass

Necromancy

The history of Sterntown and fear of the Ash Plague has made necromancy a forbidden art in Sterntown, and its practice is punishable by the most severe and gruesome of sentences.  Still the power over the dead and the lure of immortality that the dark art offers draws adherents who must conceal their research and take great efforts to disguise their creations.  Because of the fear of discovery that hangs over every necromancer they tend to be reclusive, at first skulking and scurry about and as they grow more accomplished learning to hide in plain sight through disguising their powers and adopting mannerisms that deflect suspicion.  Necromancers are rare, but the last two powerful ones ferreted out by the Church of the Queen’s witch smellers have been sorcerer with social grace, the most vibrant dress, and foppish manners, as far from the black-clad and cadaverous stereotype as possible. 

PDF Link to class guide 

The Engineer - HMS Apollyon subclass

As the new campaign running the HMS Apollyon begins to happen regularly I've started trying to complete sections of my player guide as they are needed.  It's not an easy process.  Still below is the subclass/aptitude page for the Engineer.  Engineers have proven popular amongst players, I think as they fit with the aesthetic of the game, but they have proven to be interesting and useful in their own right.  The ability to catch a third target in the splash from an oil bomb is reasonably potent, and while the Engineering skill hasn't come up in play yet, I believe it will have as much or more benefit as the skills traditionally given to dwarfs in other games.  The Apollyon has two interlocking skill systems: skills, borrowed from LOTFP, are based on a X in D6 chance, while Aptitudes are a tiered system that grants specific bonuses (and often skills).  The Engineer is a fighter subclass that has more skills then general modifiers and doesn't become as effective in melee as other fighter types will - except under the specialized circumstances of wearing, heavy, unwieldy power armor or operating a piece of crew served heavy weaponry.  

As with my other Player's Guide items the Engineer is also available here as a PDF

5E Character Sheet

So Dungeons & Dragons just released it's 5th edition. I've read the PDF and tried to figure out what people have to say about it.  I have heard some things, people playing it, people being excited.  Mostly though this is drowned out by obnoxious whining about some personalities involved in 5th edition's production.  Blah, seriously this hobby is far far to small for that sort of juvenile stupidity.

So rather then say anymore on the profound amount of stupid I see of late - here's a character sheet that should work for 5e.  It lacks equipment, and the two additional pages, the spell page and the genre fiction about you character page.  Equipment lists can be useful, and I wish I could have fit it, same with a spell list - maybe those should be on a next page if I decide to bother, but I don't need a page of background to run a character - characters develop their stories through play.

I've gone with the most non-5th edition style I could, I've tried to make this look sort of Games Workshop mid-80's to mid-90's.  I think the sheet is moderately functional, but still it's largely a joke - I much prefer this style of sheet but it wouldn't work well with a game as engineered and constrained as 5th edition.

Underdark Musings - Company Game Trait Generator

At the very bottom of everything, the well stretching skyward, with the surface as distant as the radiant heavens of the Bother Gods, and for us equally unobtainable we took stock of who had survived slaughter by the maggot skinned beasts.  We sat around a meager fire making biscuits from the weevil rich flour  whose sacks had been torn in the combat.  Our only protection was a low roof of stone held by a myriad of pillars, an edifice much like a pier, but rising from the smooth dry stone of the cave.  As we sat, men and woman first tried to find those of their own country, or those who had made up the cliques and gangs in the camps above. 

The grim descent and the fight afterward had scattered and broken these chains of the past.  Amid the abattoir of our fellows, torn by the deep beasts, the past seemed less important then before, a rebirth from a womb of light and space into a place where darkness has twelve distinct varieties.  I found myself using the blade of the ax I had grabbed up in desperation to help the man next to me heat his doughy biscuits as well as my own. He was a lean and ageless man, and from his ragged robes I knew him to once have been a noble from the distant islands across the spotted sea.  From the scars of torture and the brands on his hands I also knew him to have been a sorcerer, who had somehow survived the special attentions of the Crusaders. He called me "Ax" from that day, and we became friends there. I for my part always called him as "Titter" from his strange laugh - in our own lands we would have clung to our proud traditions and he insisted on his title and honorifics while I demanded he respect the honors I once won in the City of Glass. 

- Testimony of fallen redeemer No. 34 at the Inquisitional inquest regarding the White Fortress massacres.

I was thinking again about running a 'company style' game, where the player select from a large pool of potential characters, but do not each 'own' a specific character. Obviously generating PCs quickly is essential in such a game, and as mentioned in previous posts on the subject the goal is to have a varied party of 'adventurers' each session with a trade off between leaving the best company members in camp or using them as characters in a specific session.  While stat lines can be generated quickly, and equipment becomes more a function of company stores then individual record sheets, I wanted to add a bit more to character generation so that the company members, most who will be little more then replacements or NPCs could be a bit more memorable.

To this end, below is a table of 100 Nicknames and Traits, many of which also adjust statistics so that a player will have something to go on when starting with a new PC.

Pahvelorn Character Sheet Collection

PAHVELORn
Character

SHEETs

My most played character of late has been Beni Profane, an OD&D (well Greyhawk) thief, who has survived in Necropraxis’ long running Vaults of Pahvelorn.  The campaign is on hiatus, with the party having just slain some kind of lich and the floating ruins that have long loomed over the Vaults (a huge pit in the earth with several entrances) descending back to earth.  The campaign is thus poised on the brink of either victory or destruction, as what exactly will happen next is very much an open question.

Beni Level 1-3

Beni began as a “rat catcher” which was largely an excuse to include “sack with six rats” on his sheet. The rats have proved their usefulness, as did Beni’s faithful terrier.  The dog died in the last session (which was almost a TPK, the survivors of a huge fireball blasted and unconscious on the floor except for one Cleric who managed to cast hold person on the lich/awakened  arch mage and save the group.

This is Beni’s first character sheet, with the portrait based on a woodcut from the 17^th century. He has his ratting pole (with hook, dead rat and flag) and his ridiculous hat (with floral scarf and emergency/sneaking candles).

Dungeon Moon - Character Progression

Dungeon Moon Character Sheets

So I’ve been playing Nick from Paper & Pencils’ game on his rather unique setting “Dungeon Moon” intermittently for quite a while now.  The setting is a huge funhouse megadungeon, but with a better setting explanation then most.  

Makepeace NoHells 4th level.

The character I originally made as a joke “Makepeace NoHells”, who I originally suggested was a “Atheist Paladin” has turned out to fit the setting quite well as a militantly atheistic warrior.  Militant atheism being rather appropriate to a campaign setting where numerous extremely unpleasant demi-gods run about being nasty.  Makepeace is a fourth level fighter now and wields a dangerous magical axe that slowly fills with power from killing creatures, gems on its haft glowing as it becomes stronger, until the wielder channels this power into a single huge blow.  He’s a dangerous lunatic these days, having successfully slain (or at least trapped) on of the gods of the dungeon moon and returned with it to his strange cannibal cult family compound.  Equipped with the finest plate armor available from the cult armory and dependent on his unnatural dexterity Makepeace has become very hard to injure, making him an effective frontline fighter and door opener.

Above is the character sheet I drew of Makepeace during the last session, after Makepeace had a magically induced goblin fetus surgically removed (there are actually rules for surgically terminating demon pregnancies in LOTFP – just saying) by the party’s other fighter, Zoad the musketeer.

MakePeace NoHells, Level 1

 It  was also recently revealed, thanks to a magical magnet trap, that the reason Makepeace constantly wears a sinister full helmet inscribed with the ‘null’ symbol denying the existence of gods (foolish really in a game where there are clearly evident, actual demi-gods roaming about) isn’t just devotion.  Despite normal human intelligence and a manly enough voice, Makepeace has the grinning round face of a large baby.  The product of genetics both inbred and tampered with by wizards in the last few generations has made the fighter a freak.

KillSin NoHells, hench-cleric.

 After a few adventures, when Makepeace’s party kept emerging from the tunnels under the rocky surface of the Dungeon Moon with food, valuable and glory. His family/church has allowed him to bring along one of their most promising young preachers  as a henchwoman.  Sister-Aunt Killsin NoHells is a first level cleric of the ‘human’ spirit (though human can be switched out for whatever sentient species is currently behaving in a friendly manner).  She’s been an effective henchwoman, and has used her habitually memorized ‘command’ spell to rather good effect.  

 

Passenger Class Equipment List

The Passenger Class of the Apollyon, even it's cadet family third sons, parvenu bounders and black sheep, is wealthy enough that normal monetary concerns don't apply.  For PCs of the Passenger Class (except destitute exiles), the issues related to equipment aren't so much money, but temperament and preparation.  It's not that an adventuring passenger can't afford a proper kit, or even often find very good equipment laying about the family estate, it's that a Passenger has little or no idea what sort of equipment might be needed to delve into the wretched and forgotten parts of the hull.  Furthermore, most passengers have trouble adapting to the life of an adventurer and are loathe to replace their initial equipment.  Rather than admit idiocy, a passenger joining an adventuring party will refuse to purchase new equipment, insisting on retaining whatever meager or absurd combination of equipment they first brought adventuring out of pride and misplaced fear of looking gauche.  A passenger may not purchase normal adventuring equipment until 3rd level, and as always purchasing directly from lower deck purveyors or craftsmen will cost reputation (1 point), while sending underlings to do it will mean the requested items do not arrive for an extra session.  This does not mean that passengers cannot augment their equipment in other ways.  Items recovered during adventuring if they are of better than average quality (would normally qualify as treasure) may be used as "trophies" and even objects taken from other dead adventurers can be adopted (as mementos).

Play Report - Warlock Moon

Nick of Paper & Pencils ran an inaugural session of his Warlock Moon setting with the Pahvelorn core group.  We set off to explore the moons bleak grey wastes in a lively and fast paced session. Now this was a pretty well schooled group of tactically minded players who all have a fair amount of experience, but Nick managed to make it an interesting, challenging, and strangely almost combat free (We avoided beasts, got lucky and ran), session despite our caution and experience.

The Party
A Chimney Sweep (Thief) - Played by Ram at Save vs. Party Kill
A Warlock (Elf) - Played by Brendan of Necropraxis
A Paladin of Null (Fighter) - Played by Gus L. of Dungeon of signs.

Makepeace NoHells - LOTFP Fighter (Level 1)
A full character sheet - rather Science Fantasy I think.

The Town doesn't really have a name, well it has one: Stumberg or Stovell or something with an 'S', but even those who've lived in it their whole lives don't really remember it as there aren't any other towns.  The traders in their flowing orange robes who appear and disappear by their own whims say there are other towns, and Belina the town elder came from somewhere else.  It's an intellectual fact that there are other towns, but for the residents of The Town there is only the one - a circle of square stone buildings, flat roofed, mostly empty except for dust, and surrounded by a ring of ancient protective sigils.  The catch basins are usually filled with rain water, and the food continues to appear twice a day in the huge metal bowl at the center of 'town'.  There is enough food, the warlock saw to that before he left the townsfolk's grandparent's here.  Perhaps there is even too much food, as the town once held many more dwellers then it does now, but there is nothing else.  No craft, as there is no need and only stored materials. No business, except for the visits by the traders.  Nothing for the townsfolk beyond the petty betrayals, endless gossip, pointless vendettas and mindless lusts that come when a people have no future.

Shaman Spell Lists of the Mater Milia - Pahvelorn House Rules

In Brendan of Necropraxis' long running G+ game Vaults of Pahvelorn, due to the slow evolution of the game world, it recently made sense for my thief to hire a henchman/spiritual adviser name Lau Taxan. Lau is a former clerk and embezzler out of the holy city of Illum-Zugot, but he is also chosen by the rat goddess, and after a few months of adventuring he developed the abilities of a rat priest.

Der Rattenkonig

Now one of the things that's developed in Pahvelorn is an interesting religious dichotomy between followers of the orthodox sky religion, the Eternal Empire and the resurgent cults of old local spirits.  Many local spirit cults are animal in nature, and have very different powers.  In order to make this religious split interesting (it's changed party dynamics a bit - with (arguably evil) the thief and child witch trying to outdo the (arguably good) two clerics with good acts to prove their dubious rat deity is a more generous god than the Empire. One could also comment that the PCs religious beliefs have made the party less mercenary, and more focused on helping the various towns and human civilizations rather than narrowly focused on loot and advancement.

Under Brendan's rules, the distinction between the way priests and traditional religious practitioners work is interesting with an entirely different kind of casting and limited menu of spells based on summoned spirit.  Details on the Cult can be found in this post about Lau Taxan, but it has recently been described as "Rat focused Marxism" and indeed a common mantra of its worshipers is "To the glory of the Mother according to her needs, from each according to ability"

Illusionist as a Magic-User hybrid

I have been thinking about illusionists, much in the same way that I redesigned the Assassin for my home ASE game, I think the illusionist is worth a few changes.  I've made them a bit of an odd hybrid between thief and magic user, though the illusionist as written is a lot closer to a wizard specifically trained in large scale combat (illusions work really well on masses of low level troops) and intrigue.  Something like a vizer to kings, rather than a dungeoneer (given their lack of utility spells related to physical challenges).  I hope that my changes bring the class back a bit closer to its concept of a nimble trickster.

This could work as an ASE character

Illusionists have a pretty cool spell list.  It gets absurdly powerful at high levels (though arguably no more so than Magic User) and starts out roughly the same, but with wildly impossible statistic requirements (15 + Intelligence, 16 + Dexterity and no stats below 6 except Constitution) it seems appropriate to make Illusionists something special.  The idea of illusionists as written is insufficiently novel as well.  Sure there's a new spell list that is themed around confusion and phantasm but little else is provided in the Player's Handbook to define what exactly an illusionist is compared to a magic-user, except rather they are rather nimble.

To my mind Illusionists are something more than that, they are self-taught magical auto-didacts from a different tradition than academic thaumaturges.  In my ASE game I've always envisioned them as members of traveling circuses, lone wandering wonder workers, or the hedge wizards employed by rural bandits.  Magically talented people who have gotten by on a scrap or two of stolen knowledge and sheer ability to warp reality rather than careful study.