Hex C-1: The ducal hunting grounds. There are many small game trails, and if the party remain here for very long they may find the Duke’s hunting lodge, which is currently locked and unattended. The game in the Duke’s hunting grounds is unnaturally plentiful, plump, and easily killed even by clumsy attacks.
If any of said game is killed by a weapon which does not bear the unique mark of the Duke’s hunting party, then a moment after it falls dead, the animal will rise as an undead creature. With ability it never possessed in life it will begin running with all haste towards the nearest legal official in the Duke’s service, and all the way it will be screaming a physical description of the character who dealt a killing blow to it.
Hunting in the Duke’s forest is a serious crime, punishable by death. Arrest warrants and wanted posters will begin to circulate within a few days, and there will be a significant reward for the perpetrator’s capture. The testimony of undead game is irrefutable under the laws of the duchy, so long as it is able to identify its murderer in court.
Hex C-2: A large Gothic cathedral for which the Duchy was once famous. When the Duke first made contact with Hell, it was offered to the devils as a diabolic embassy, which has been its function for some years now. The Cathedral and its gardens are the sovereign ground of hell, unbound by any of the laws which govern the rest of the duchy. The small village and farmlands surrounding the cathedral have been abandoned. Even the Duke’s most loyal subjects would find it difficult to be within sight of the embassy. To hear the sounds that come from its grounds.
The Cathedral has of course been completely rebranded, with all of its Christian symbols either destroyed or desecrated. Notably in the deepest basements of the building is a massive stone vat—almost a pool. The cathedral’s relics made of precious metals have been embeded into the interior of the vat, and coated in years of diabolic excretions. Papists who fall under the devils powers are often brought here to be drowned. The presence of these precious objects has since been disguised by a foul sludge, but if they were recovered the church would be immensely grateful. (Of course, it would be a great indignity for you to expect payment for returning them. So you may want to find someone else to hand them over to.)
Throughout the interior of the cathedral grows a red, mossy fungus, peppered with black mushrooms. This fungus is alive, and is always listening and watching to everything that goes on within the Cathedral. Intruders are often allowed to think it is merely an inanimate thing, so that a trap can best be set for them wherever they plan to go. The old archbishop’s vestry holds the Fungus’ head, resembling a cow’s skull with crusty yellow eyeballs.
Hex C-3: The party comes upon a large riverboat, about 600 yards from the river. Two weeks ago, during a period of one hour and sixteen minutes when the devils had the legal authority to toll the river, they diverted this ship out of the water, and cursed the crew to experience a shared hallucination that they were all still traveling to their destination. The ship is fully manned by an able crew, and well protected by a number of deck mounted cannons, and a cohort of the Duke’s men. The people on the ship are literally incapable of believing that they are not on the river en route to the port city of Charluir, and they are starting to wonder why it’s taking so long to get there.
What the crew does understand is that for some reason, they are delayed. This is a huge problem, because they’re carrying the pay for the soldiers garrisoning Charluir. In their hold are chests containing 22,530 pieces of silver. The captain will gladly reward anyone who can get them back on course from his own personal funds, as he is worried any delay may cost him his life. However, due to their hallucination, neither he nor his men are willing to leave the ship.
Of course, piracy will be met with all due force.
Hex C-4: The Raison family are small hold subsistence farmers who grow a variety of vegetables on their plot. There are sweet potatoes, green beans, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, and even a pair of peach trees. They usually get on well enough, but the last few harvests have been poor for them. Last season they even needed to beg some alms from the duke’s ministers to make it. This year they were relieved to see their yield coming in strong.
But something isn’t right. Their sweet potatoes have literal eyes, which glare with absolute loathing at the family. The green beans taste like vomit, and if you manage to choke one down, your excretions will become animate and run off in the night. The cabbage leaves are razor sharp, and the carrots are too hot to touch. The peaches are the worst, sprouting toothy, oversiezd mouths. They shout insults and obscenities at anyone near them, and seem to know things that they cannot know.
The Broccoli is unchanged.
If left alone, the green bean poops will come to take the peaches around to all the other vegetables, which they will eat. Once all are eaten, the peach and poop become a monster.
Hex C-5: Goats are the lowest order of Devils. They live among us as informants, subtle temptors, and occasional saboteurs. They chafe under their restrictive existence of living as mere animals among mankind, but laws must be obeyed. At least until you find a loophole. And the rats nest of laws in the duchy has created nothing if not an endlessly exploitable number of loopholes.
So long as they act unanimously in groups of 10 or more, Goats in the duchy are free to speak and act of their own accord. (So, of course, this bunch has elected a leader, and all agree with her without any dissent, lest they lose this opportunity). Votes are frequent, but never is a dissenting voice heard. Their plan is to win as many souls for the minor devil Xulmaruk as they can. Xulmaruk is among the weakest of the demon lords, but if they can win enough souls for him for him to take notice, then perhaps he will regard them as useful servants and take them into his direct employ, serving in a greater capacity than goats are normally allowed. In this pursuit this herd will do whatever they have to, so long as it does not disrupt the many loopholes they are currently exploiting.
All goats speak with the voice of James Earl Jones.
Hex C-6: A crudely built castle, nestled near the base of a mountain. The residents built this in imitation of the castles they’d seen in the valleys, without any of the expertise that would normally be required. Behind the castle wall is the entrance to a deep cave complex, which served as the original home of the residents. A number of wattle and daub huts have begin to spread outside the castle walls as well, as this population expands.
The residents here are men who wear paint and furs. Their dicks swing down freely between their knees. This might seem unwieldly to some, but it doesn’t bother them any more than a tail bothers a fox. When these men become agitated, they become erect, and their erect phallus is a truly a thing to behold.
It’s an average of six feet long, with the toughness of a sturdy birch shaft. The head of the penis, already unusually angled, becomes dangerously sharp when fully engorged. The speardick men use their tallywhackers as thrusting spears, dealing 1d8 damage on a successful hit. Once battle is ended, they put away their weapons by vigorously fucking the last wound they put into their foe.
The speardick men are disdainful towards sex. They view it as “The joy of battle, without the honor.” But they do recognize it as a necessary evil. Something to be undertaken as a duty, with a proper amount of stoic lamentation before and after. The tribe has a treaty with the Acidtit women which goes back as long as anyone can remember. The speardick men travel to the acidtit women in small groups to mate, and when they leave they take any newborn Speardick boys with them.
The mating of these two groups used to be an annual affair, which frustrated the Acidtit women’s desire to bear ever more children. Through a bit of coordinated bedroom talk they’ve gradually convinced the Speardick men that more frequent meetings will only strengthen both tribes, as their numbers continue to swell.
Hex C-7: The Grove of Anti-Eden. A verdant paradise surrounded by a wrought iron fence that glows red with heat. Only the gate can be touched without harm, and anyone who wishes may pass through the gate freely in either direction.
While within the grove, people lose all concept of good, evil, morality, or good judgement of any kind. It is a den of decadence and sin: indiscriminate orgies, endless feasts, gambling, no work, no worship, no obligations. It is a hedonistic paradise. A devil standing near the gate (in the closet thing to friendly looking human form that a devil can manage) makes sure everyone is fully informed that those who enter will lose their sense of right and wrong in exchange for unfettered access to all the pleasures they can imagine. Most folks don’t care. They convince themselves they’ll leave before they die, but few people can muster the willpower to do so. Think of the grove as a sort of “sell your soul to the devil” area effect.
Players who enter do not control their characters. They must describe their objective, and upon entering they must make a saving throw versus Magic. On failure they will want to spend the rest of their days engaging in the pleasures here and won’t leave of their own volition. If they succeed on their saving throw, then they manage to muster the willpower to leave. However, what they accomplish is determined by rolling a d6.
1. You really just forget about your goal and engage with the sin for awhile. Pick one of the 7 deadly sins that fits, or randomly determine one. You spend 1d8 days doing that before you manage to wander your way back out. Something good comes of it. (You come out with something cool, you’ve got some new friends, etc)
2. You spend 1d4 days wallowing n sin, and you manage to half complete your goal. If you go in again, and manage to escape a second time, you get to roll on this table with a cumulative +1.
3. You spend 1d4 days wallowing in sin, but escape with your goal mostly completed. However, you did forget one little thing. It’s something that’s not really worth going back for, but damn it’s going to be annoying without it.
4. You spend 1d5 days wallowing in sin, but escape with your goal entirely completed. However, something bad happened to you in there. Maybe you lost an item, or took an injury, or just have a really nasty hangover. Determine a 7 deadly sin, and fiat some consequence based on that.
5. You spend 1d12 hours wallowing in sin, but you escape with your goal totally completed.
6. You zip in, zip out, goal complete. No fuss, no muss.
Regardless of the result, the referee is at full liberty to describe the manner in which the PC comported themselves within the grove.
Hex B-1: A palatial estate with impressive gardens, and a constant flow of people coming and going with deliveries and shipments. A sign over the path leading to the main house identifies the place as “Hugo’s Haberdashery.”
Hugo himself was, until a few years ago, just a shoemaker. To be sure, he was the finest shoemaker in all the land, convinced to reside in this Duchy at no small expense by the Duke. He had risen to the greatest heights a shoemaker might expect, but he was still a shoemaker. With the coming of the devils, however, the importance of the Duke’s shoes became more than a fashion statement. They became the tools with which legal and cosmic policy was forged. They became the weapons of war.
Being a shrewd man, Hugo maneuvered himself not only to supply the Duke’s footwear, but to oversee the small army of craftspeople required to keep the Duke looking fabulous at all times. His fine country estate functions like a cross between a factory and an artistic commune, where the most avant garde in both fashion and function are produced, and become passe before anyone outside the estate has even seen them.
Hex B-2: Borges Castle, where the Duke lives, was a dour, functional structure of stone. It was notably out of keeping with the Duke’s character, until he ordered that each stone of the castle’s wall be painted a different color than those adjacent to it. Now the castle is a riot of color. No less functional, but more ridiculous than dour.
Anyone who enters the castle must be attended by one of the Duke’s many friendly, diligent guides. Without one they will find it nearly impossible to get where they intend to go, no matter how many times they have visited the castle before. Even with a guide, visitors may notice that doors do not always lead to the same room each time they are opened.
Around Borges Castle is a respectably sized city of ~7,250 inhabitants. It has grown rapidly in recent years, its population swelled first by the bureaucrats needed to administer the duchy as an independent realm, then by dilettantish diabolists, and the wastrel youth of European nobility eager for a front row seat to whatever madness is happening here. And of course, there are the armies of merchants, servants, and craftspeople needed to serve the former two groups.
An outflow of the river cuts through the middle of town, then rejoins the main a few miles South.
Hex B-3: On a minor outflow of the river is a water mill and a small cottage. The miller is a 13 year old boy who lives here with his beleaguered wife and their infant son.
One of the first laws passed in the duchy made it illegal for boys who lived in mills, and who do not have the surname “Miller” to grow any older. In point of fact, the young man here is 22 years of age, but is trapped in this young body. His childhood sweetheart had boldly insisted they could make marriage work despite his condition, and they did for a time. But as young married couples are wont to do, they produced a child. A beautiful baby boy.
A boy who shared his father’s surname, and had nowhere to live but a mill. Nearly 3 years of caring for the same newborn child has just about driven the poor woman insane. She’s just one bad day away from snapping and murdering the both of them. Once she’s standing over their bodies she’ll probably do something like wrap her naked body in their skin and claim to be a little girl who couldn’t possibly have done any of the terrible things she’s being accused of.
Hex B-4: Eight years ago, an army of crusading papists camped here. They anticipated a difficult river crossing on their way to lay seige to the Duke’s castle in the coming days. What they didn’t expect was for a detachment of the Duke’s forces to cross the river in the night, storm the camp, and lay waste to the disorganized crusaders.
A great pillar of victory was commissioned for the site. An edifice of marble, 20′ high, depicting the battle and the events leading up to it. Aside from this, the Duke ordered that the camp be left untouched. The bodies still lie where they fell, picked clean to the bone by carrion. The tents have mostly been blown over or rotted away, and what few remain have become vermin nests.
The Duke himself carried off the cache of silver held for the soldier’s pay, and peasants bold enough to defy the duke’s command have robbed the place of many other of its valuables. Even to this day, however, none have found The Sword of Saint Ambros of Milan, a singular weapon that belongs to the Pope, and is sometimes lent to those who wage wars in the Pope’s name.
The sword grants the wielder the benefits of a Protection from Evil spell, but only if it was properly lent to them by the pontiff. The sword is not otherwise magical, but is richly appointed and easily recognized by many people. It would be difficult to sell, as it is a well known papal possession and anyone but the pope who claimed to own it would be considered a thief.
Hex B-5: A massively obese woman who is so large she serves as part of the landscape, with grass growing patchily on her hill-like body, and critters burrowing in her folds. Her many ailments make her a light sleeper, and she will awaken at the slightest provocation. She reacts to each intruder differently. Roll 1d4.
1. Who are you? Why are you at my home!? GET OUT! IT’S MY HOME!
2. Absolutely enraged by something specific about the character. The color of their clothing, the style of their hair, their attitude, whatever. It infuriates her. She doesn’t want you to leave, she just wants you to take the abuse she will heap upon you.
3. Demands you get / prepare food for her. Something horridly unhealthy, and probably very difficult.
4. Demands you get rid of someone / something she hates.
If you don’t appease this hateful, impatient child of a creature, she will howl and scream at the one who displeased her. Such obscenities will fly from her mouth. Stuff you feel scared to say. Race stuff.
The piercing sound deals 1 damage every 10 minutes to everyone within the hex. The party has a 5 in 6 chance to be accosted by the Duke’s men before they leave the hex. These will know exactly what is happening, and will have wax in their ears to protect themselves. They will attempt to force the party to go satisfy the monster, under pain of death.
Hex B-6: Plump, 2’ long slugs. Dull yellow, with bright glittering speckles to their skin. These are Gilded Slugs, and anyone with regional knowledge will recognize them as delicacies; once a popular export before the region was embargoed. They’re valuable within the duchy, and phenomenally valuable (and illegal) outside of it. They’re worth even more alive, though they cannot be bred outside of these mountains. They eat lichen & small insects, and spend most of the day sleeping in tight rock crevices.
Their mucen dries skin intensely, sucking the moisture out of a body. If touched, save versus Poison. On success, take 1d6 damage. On failure, hands become crumbly. Take 1d6 damage, and the surface of your hands becomes painful and unusable. You can’t use your hands for 1d4 weeks. Bandage them, or you might get an infection.
The group you find is 1d12 slugs, all within 2 rounds of movement from a narrow crevice of rock. They’re munchin’ on lichen. You’re quite lucky! Dedicated hunters have a number of elaborate crevice-fishing methods. To come across them in the open is a rare treat.
Hex B-7: A cavern leading to a mirrored maze. If a PC attempts an attack roll here, they have a 1-in-3 chance of attacking the mirror rather than their target.
This is the lair of Solkor the Yellow, and it holds all the treasures one might expect to find in a dragon’s lair. The area is protected by chitinous yellow goblins who grew out of Solkor’s shed scales. (These have no chance to strike the mirrors by accident.) Solkor does not spend much time in his lair of late, but if any of the mirrors here are broken, Solkor will hear it, no matter how far away he is.
Hex A-1: Undesirables are brought to these plains to be executed. Priests, papists, bad singers, and the unattractive are common, but there are plenty of folks who simply ran afoul of whoever has power over them in the increasingly complicated hierarchy of the duchy.
The condemned are paired with an innocent loved one, and taken far from anywhere they might find help. The location is known only by the executioner, and even the occasional spectators are brought to the execution grounds while blindfolded. Using steel that has been twisted into unbreakable cords by infernal techniques, the victims are bound together. Back-to-back, they are connected at the neck, wrists, ankles, and waist.
Restrained in this manner, they are dropped into a 15′ deep pit. The walls of the pit are lined with metal blades. Enough food and water is thrown into the pit each day to sustain one pair. When there’s more than one pair, they must awkwardly fight each other to survive. If any pair survives long enough, the predicament will wear away at any love that existed between them, until they die hating one another.
Rarely, someone manages to climb out of the pit by breaking all of their partner’s bones, giving them enough mobility to escape. Some half-dozen of these roam the plains, driven mad by the horror of their existence.
Hex A-2: A village of ~700 along the river’s edge, with a pair of small river boats moored at its dock. Until a few years ago, the people here would take goods from passing trading ships and move them inland. It was a small operation even during a busy year, but now the traders don’t even bother to stop anymore.
The townsfolk have all been infested with diabolic tumors in their brains. The cancer grows ever outward, causing bulging clusters of horns to grow from their heads. Large portions of their brains have been eaten up by this disease, and what remains is under immense and painful pressure. They exhibit a childlike intelligence, without any of a child’s charms. They suffer constant pain and anger, and are guided by the vile influence of the growths in their brains. They don’t understand anything but instant gratification. Their mood swings are violent, and can be triggered by the most innocuous things. They lack any impulse control, are unabashedly narcissistic, and have a cruel sense of humor.
Hex A-3: Auscezal, the traveling bureaucrat. She has blue skin, curling goats horns, and a short fat body that would be about 3′ tall if not for her 7′ long bird’s legs. She was assigned to the duchy both because of her incredible speed (up to 50 miles an hour), and because she knows a ritual that allows her to communicate with her superiors using only a single human sacrifice. This allows her to learn of new laws, and rush to wherever they need to be applied, before they end up rewritten the next day. The next time she needs to report to her superiors is in 1d6 -3 hours. (So she may be overdue, and in dire need of a human to sacrifice).
Auscezal: AC 15, HD 7, Movement 360′(120′), Kick 1d6, Morale 9 Immune to any weapon that could be reasonably classified as a sword.
If Auscezal’s kick rolls in the upper half of its range, the target must save versus Paralyzation or be grabbed by her. When grabbing a target Auscezal cannot attack other targets, but may move at half speed by hopping on one leg. The grabbed target takes 1d8 crushing damage per round.
Hex A-4: A small hut of a type which has not been common in centuries. Around it is a garden, a coop of chickens, and a well for water. An hermit lives here alone, peacefully meditating on her long life, and writing a book describing her philosophy. In exchange for a day’s worth of chores, she will offer any peaceful traveler two hot meals, a dry place to sleep, and the benefit of her wisdom.
Any group who takes her up on this offer may ask her three questions. Two of these she will answer to the best of her ability–and her abilities are great, aided by her wide travels and keen observational skills. However, one of the questions will be answered with an evil lie.
She will warn the travelers up front about this fact, and will apologize to them for the necessity. She is frail, and could never have resisted the devils. They agreed to let her live out the rest of her life in peace in exchange for this small concession from her. She will do her very best to fool the party, but when all three questions have been answered she will wish them luck in identifying which one was the lie.
If the players somehow trick her into revealing the truth, devils will instantly appear. They will effortlessly tear her to pieces and burn her hut to the ground, taking extra care to destroy her book. They will leave the party unharmed, and may even thank them for their help in getting this woman to breach her agreement.
Hex A-5: There is an angel here. suspended from the trees around him by a thousand tiny hooks in his skin and wings. Ten devils, no more than two feet tall, dance around him in glee, mocking him, spitting on him, and occasionally yanking at one of the strings to tear a hook from his body. As the players approach, he loses an eye.
If the players make their presence known, the devils will all turn into snakes and disappear into the underbrush. Their work was already done before the players got here. The angel has renounced God. Soon his wings will wither and fall from his body. He is doomed now to live out a mortal life knowing he is condemned by god. His existence will be miserable, and it will be made all the more so by the absolute certainty that it will be worse when his life ends.
When he does eventually die he will become a devil of the lowest order. A thing of slime and pain that will never know another moment of joy.
Hex A-6: This neck of the woods is filled with dogs. Even if these dogs are never encountered, anyone passing through will hear barking all around them while they travel here.
The dogs move in groups of exactly 6, and each group is chasing a naked person. These people wear heavy chains around their neck, which have been bolted to large stones that they carry in their arms. It’s only a matter of time before the dogs catch them, and they are devoured by the beasts. But even then the torture is not over. After a night spent in hell, these poor souls will awaken covered in the dog’s shit, and the chase will begin again.
Dogs: AC 13, HD 1, Movement 150 (50′), Bite 1d6, Morale 12
The only way to free these people is to slay all 6 of the dogs chasing them. If even one dog remains alive, the others will be revived the next morning. The people being chased probably do not know this.
Hex A-7: Hidden high in the mountains is an army of human soldiers, 600 strong. They’re encamped in a small valley amidst the mountains, impossible to see until you’re standing only a few hundred feet away from it. The encampment seems well established, with row after row of tents that appear dirty and weather worn. Yet no sound comes from the camp, no smoke from cooking fires, or even dust from marching. It appears to be abandoned.
If the players approach, they will find every tent filled with sleeping soldiers. They cannot be awakened, and their bodies are cold to the touch, but they are still breathing and their hearts still beat. The animals of the camp are found in a similar condition.
The players are free to loot the camp, though there are no items of particular value here, there’s certainly enough basic armament to outfit a similarly sized army.
There is no means here by which the players might learn this, but this army exists as a remnant of an earlier version of the diabolic contract. Three years ago there was a brief moment which allowed the devils to assume control of this army from the duke. That right was quickly revoked in a later version of the contract, but the devils made use of a loophole that allowed them to remain responsible for the army so long as it was incapacitated. So here the army waits, legally under the command of the devils so long as they are kept in stasis, waiting for an opportunity to prove useful.
Cecil Howe (a scholar and gentleman if ever there was one) offered to let me fuck around with one of his maps. Thank you Cecil!
The Situation
Sometimes it’s just easier to allow a weak king to stick around and be weak. His vassals pay nominal homage, but rule their own territories like small kingdoms. If anyone outside their lands asks, they’re absolutely loyal to their king, blah blah blah. Of course, none of the decrees made in their duchy bear the king’s name, and why should they? These dukes have more soldiers, more cunning, and more balls than the king’s got, so who is going to stop them?
Arnulf Broglie, “The Dancing Duke,” was (until recently) one of these. He ruled a middling territory of middling importance, and wielded middling power. The only remarkable thing about the man was his dancing. Not a pursuit fitting of his lordly dignity, but no one who saw him dance could say he did not excel at it. It was sometimes joked that he could have been a more powerful man as a traveling entertainer in European courts than he was as the Duke of a relatively minor duchy. It’s a joke that would probably be true, if not for the hidden powers of his dance.
Arnulf was charming, funny, and generous. He had all the qualities of a great gentleman, if not a great statesman. It was his weakness in the latter arena which led to his break with the church.
As a young man, still beholden to his father’s commands, Arnulf had taken an oath before the pontiff to crusade on the church’s behalf. By the time Arnulf was called to serve, his father had passed, and the Duke had no interest in fulfilling his oath. The pontiff couldn’t allow this minor duke to establish a precedent for disregarding the crusader’s oath, and spent years coaxing the stubborn young ruler to crusade. Even a nominal concession would have been sufficient, but Duke Broglie did not budge.
The pontiff threatened, and finally delivered a writ of excommunication which Arnulf danced on it with dirty boots, and returned. The enraged pontiff took a further step, damning Duke Broglie’s soul to hell. A crusade was declared against him, and the other dukes and lords began to imagine how they would divide his territory amongst themselves.
Facing certain destruction, Duke Broglie decided that if he was in for a penny, he may as well be in for a pound. He entered into a contract with the devil: his kingdom in exchange for the power to defeat his enemies. For the devils it seemed a surprisingly straightforward trade. Usually mortals needed to be tricked into this sort of thing. The Duke’s single strange request, that the contract be written in the language of dance, was taken by Satan as mere foppish fancy.
The devils infused the duchy’s soldiers with fanatical loyalty and infernal strength. They instructed the duke’s engineers in the crafting of hellish instruments of war. Duke Broglie’s foes were obliterated within three years, and the devils moved to claim their payment. That’s when the the Duke began to Dance.
Duke Broglie’s mastery of the contract was beyond anything the devils had ever expected or experienced. They were well used to mortals versed in mortal law. Mortals who thought they could outsmart a devil at a devil’s game. It had never been anything but a minor inconvenience. Never before had it worked.
Every day a dance battle is held in the grand hall of the castle, where the contract is debated, extended, and revised. The devils have won some small victories, but the Duke’s dance is too strong. He has yet to expel them from his lands, but his calm confidence that everything is going well has never faltered.
Encounters
A single encounter table covers the whole of the map. Roll 2d4 to determine what creatures are encountered.
2. Solkor The Yellow, a dragon which slept for long centuries before being awakened by the incessant pounding of feet from all this legally-binding dance. Solkor hoards mirrors, and prizes a fine mirror more than any other treasure. AC 17, HD 12, Move 240’/240′, 2 Claws 1d8, Bite 2d10. Morale 9. Breathes a sense of suicidal self loathing which requires characters to save versus magic (not breath) or deal 2x max weapon damage to themselves. The feeling passes after this damage is dealt, but if a character is prevented from harming themselves the depression will persist until they are cleansed by suffering. If Solkor is slain, another dragon will take his place.
3. A caravan of merchants moving goods from one location to another. There are 1d4 carts in the caravan, and they will be able to sell most basic items that would be found in a small village. For each cart in a caravan, they will also be carrying a curio that will be for sale. There is a 4-in-6 chance that any given merchant caravan is trying to smuggle something.
4. A roving band of 1d6 devils. Their behaviors are strictly controlled by whatever the current conditions of the contract are, but few if any provisions of the contract will govern their attitudes towards outsiders traveling in the Duke’s lands. The appearances of devils vary wildly, but a good average of their abilities would be AC 15, HD 4, Move 120′, Attack 1d8, Morale 8. Most will also posses special powers such as flight, a second attack, dealing additional elemental damage, short range teleportation, or gaseous form, determined by the referee at the table. For convenience, groups of devils may be similar of type.
5. A patrol of the Duke’s men. There is a 50/50 chance they will be 1d4 + 1 mounted soldiers, or 2d6 + 2 foot soldiers. They’re primarily concerned with ferreting out papists and keeping an eye on the movements of demons. That said, they’re a cruel lot. Being transformed by devils will do that to a person.
Mounted Soldiers: AC 16, HD 2, Move 360′, Weapon for 1d10, Morale 11, Special: 1/Day Fire Blast from hands, dealing 3d8 damage, save v. Breath for half.
Foot Soldiers: AC 14, HD 1, Move 120′, Weapon for 1d8, Morale 11, Special: Special: 1/Day Fire Blast from hands, dealing 3d8 damage, save v. Breath for half.
6. A group of 2d6 papal agents. They are dressed inconspicuously. Perhaps they are dressed as peasants, or merchants, or even as the Duke’s soldiers. They will not expose themselves foolishly, but if they think they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, they will offer any group of inferior strength the option to repent or die. The penitent will immediately be smuggled out of the duchy, or shanghaied into service via a “Pendant of Papal Geas” someone in the group is hiding on their person. Papal Agent: AC 15, HD 2, Move 120′, Weapon for 1d6, Morale 10. Special: Once per day each papal agent can add 4 to their attack and damage roll against one person who is not an avowed member of their faith.
7. Wildlife which has been transformed and driven mad by the infernal magics that now abound in the duchy. There are (1) Devil Bears, (2) Hell Elk, (3) Satanic Serpents, (4) Vile Sharks, (5) Sinning Hounds, and (6) Boars of Babylon.
8. An army 1d6*100 strong. Roll to determine if the army is (1-3) Duke Borges’ men, (4-5) Papists, (6) Devils. The army is currently moving on the nearest held enemy location. If it’s an army of Devils, or of the Duke’s men, then their movement legal under the contract as it stands at this moment. (Unless they’re moving against papists, who are never protected by the contract anyway.)
Note: This post, as well as the seven others which will follow it next week, were originally written about two years ago. They were intended to be nothing more than a short series, building on my then-popular Cool Stuff in the Wrong Direction posts. The idea quickly caught fire in my imagination, and I started to develop and expand it beyond the original 8-post run.
Before I knew it, I’d written an entire book. Literally. For over a year now, I’ve had 150+ pages sitting on my hard drive while I work on gathering art and saving money to pay for a proper layout. My plan was to hold these posts in reserve until it was time for a big marketing push. The thought was that I’d post all of these, then after the last one went up I’d say “Didja like that? Well guess what, it was just the first draft of a book that is on sale right now!”
I don’t think it was a terrible plan, but the further out I get from originally writing these posts, the rougher my rough draft starts to look. At this point I don’t think they’re very representative of the quality of the book. Which isn’t to say they’re bad posts–I wouldn’t post them if I thought they were bad–but I don’t want to hold them in reserve any longer. It’s time to get these out of my drafts folder, and out into the world.
Enjoy!
It’s entirely possible that I’m just stupid. There have been many times when I felt certain that what I was looking for didn’t exist, only to be proven humiliatingly wrong the moment I opened my mouth about it. Having said that…
I’ve never seen a good explanation of how the nitty gritty of hex crawling is supposed to work. In the past when I’ve said this in a public space, I’ve been given links to some ostensible explanation. However interesting these links might be, they tend to focus on how a hex crawl ought to work in theory, and have never satisfied my curiosity about the practical, at-the-table mechanics of running one. I’m sure there are people out there who know exactly how a hex crawl should run in practice, but unless any of them want to explain it to me, I need to make the rules up myself. Just for the sake of being comprehensive, I’m going to start with the absurdly basic stuff.
Each hex is 6 miles across. The terrain type shown on the space accounts for the majority of the hex’s terrain. But just because a given hex shows plains doesn’t mean you can’t find a copse of trees there. Plains dominate the space, but the world’s environs aren’t actually broken down into hexes. The hexes are an abstraction. The straight lines between one environment and another actually represent a gradual, uneven transition. Saying “The trees become more spares, giving way to plains over the 6 hours you travel West” is fine. The map itself may be ugly, but since the players will be describing their movement in terms of how many hours they walk in a given direction, a more detailed map doesn’t really improve your ability to manage the campaign much. Though, there’s no harm in taking a prettier map and slapping a hex grid on top of it, that works just fine as well.
It has occasionally been pointed out that a 6 mile hex is ludicrously huge in size. Video games noted for their vast playing space, such as Oblivion or Skyrim, are small enough that the entirety of the game world would fit within a single hex. This vastness is actually beneficial in several ways:
It means that no matter how often the players travel through a given hex, you can always justify finding something new there. Barring significant effort, this ensures that a given wilderness environment never becomes safe and mundane.
The math for converting hexes into miles is very simple, if for some reason you ever need to do that.
It allows you to portray vastly different political situations, environments, and cultures, without forcing you to manage an unwieldy amount of game spaces.
Moving on: the most confusing thing about hex crawls for me has always been how to translate what the players say into what is happening on the hex map. In the past I’ve tried giving players a blank hex grid of their own so they could fill in spaces and tell me which edge of the hex they wanted to explore out of, but I don’t like how this feels. Players already have an idea of how to communicate movement in the wilderness using the cardinal directions. The hex map can be a great referee tool, but I’d prefer not to make the players think about the world in terms of hexes. Unfortunately, cardinal directions don’t always give you a good idea of what hex the players will move to.
If your map were drawn on this hex grid, it would be easy to know what to do if the players say “we go East,” or “we go West.” But what about the North/South axis? Do you choose to skew them slightly to the East, or slightly to the West of where they wanted to go? You could just determine it randomly, then remember to skew back in the other direction if they keep going. That would keep them moving in vaguely the right direction, and is probably the best choice for maximum simplicity. It’s not unreasonable to think they meander a bit as they travel.
If you’re more ambitious, you could try to keep an idea of where your players actually fall within their hex. This requires more granular tracking of how far your players move at a time, but it does have the benefit of making their time expenditure more meaningful, and of making it more clear what hex to move them into next. The geometric simplicity of a 6 mile hex, along with the fact that LotFP’s daily movement rates are all divisible by 6, should make this a feasible task. Though I can’t imagine doing it without constantly marking little travel lines on my hex map. I’d probably tend towards the simpler option myself, at least until I’m more confident running hex crawls than I currently am.
Which brings us to terrain difficulty. You can’t just have characters moving through mountains at the same speed they move along a road. Some hexes are more difficult to get through than others. There’s a whole range of methods, with varying degrees of complexity, that you could use to determine just how much travel is slowed on rough ground. For now, I’d like to keep it super simple. There are three types of terrain:
Normal. Players move at a normal rate through most terrains. If it doesn’t fit into either of the other categories, it’s normal.
Difficult. Players move at half speed. This is anything that would present a significant challenge to movement, like mountains or swamps.
Roads. Players move twice as fast so long as they’re walking along a road.
Hand in hand with terrain type is encounter checks. How do those work? How often do you check for them? Again, I say keep it simple. Check once per hex. Twice if the hex’s terrain is difficult, and once every second hex if the players are on a road. (That’s once every 6, 3, or 12 miles respectively). Commensurately, I’d probably place relatively uninteresting encounters along the roads. (After all, anything interesting will have been found), and more interesting encounters in difficult terrain. That creates a nice risk-reward dynamic between fast travel with no loot, and slow travel with tonsaloot.
So what are these encounters, and how are they determined? I’m a big proponent of Brendan’s overloaded encounter die. In ORWA, I use three different encounter die charts based on how frequently a check is required. This is what I use for my 4-hour checks, which I think should translate well to once-per-hex checks.
Encounter.
Location.
Spoor
Rations.
Lost
Safe
Encounters are stuff like wandering monsters or NPCs. They’re rolled on an overall list that covers multiple hexes, like an entire cluster of forest hexes, or maybe even just a whole hex map. There’s between 4 and 8 entries on this table, and nothing is too specific. I don’t want to have to restock it. The point of the encounter table is to provide a sense of cohesion. No matter where you go within the domain of the Goblin King, you might encounter a goblin war party.
Locations are the beating heart of the hex map. They’ll require some extended discussion, so I’ll do that below.
Spoors are hints. They’re footprints, eggs, nests, or a dropped note. They let you know that something exists nearby which you haven’t encountered. When you roll a spoor, you should flip a coin to determine whether it’s an encounter or a location, then roll on the appropriate table to find out what the spoor points to. Once you know that, you can tell the players what kind of spoor they find. Then it’s up to them to interpret it, and choose how to respond.
Rations means the players are tired and need to rest and eat. If they don’t, they’ll take whatever penalties tired and hungry characters suffer. (Personally, I call it a flat -1 to all rolls). This result can be dismissed if it comes up more than once in rapid succession, but having it attached to the encounter roll is a lot easier than tracking rations separately. A+++++ highly recommended.
Lost means that the players are lost. The referee doesn’t tell them that they’re lost, but you roll 1d6 to determine which direction they start moving in. Of course, if they’ve got some means to avoid getting lost, consider this a “safe” roll. Means do avoid getting lost would be following a road or river, having a guide who knows the area. or even just having a compass.
I’d actually be interested in exploring the idea of getting lost in greater depth, since it’s fairly easy to avoid it. Maybe compasses should be a lot more expensive than they usually are? A high level luxury, perhaps. But that discussion is for a different post.
Safe means nothing happens. Sometimes you move from one hex to the next hex without anything exciting happening.
Alright, so, Locations. Locations are tied to individual hexes. When the encounter die rolls a location, you have to check to see what hex the players are in, and then what locations exist in that hex. If a hex map were a dungeon map, the locations would be the room descriptions. But unlike a dungeon, the “rooms” are so vast that there’s only a small chance of seeing the description each time you pass through a hex.
Locations can really be anything. Of course they can be actual locations, such as villages, dungeons, altars, statues, magic trees, whatever. But they can also be something more transient. They can be wandering wizards, recently summoned demons, or a big scary monster. These are things you might normally think of as encounters, but they’re unique, so you don’t want to put them on the encounter list, which is meant to be more general.
How many locations should a hex have? From experience I can confirm that it’s easy to underestimate just how large an undertaking stocking a hex map really is. There’s no need to create a table of locations for each hex. It’s not like players are going to spend a ton of time exploring a single hex and run through all your work. Hexes are made for passing through. After a session of hex crawling, you can just go back through and restock all the hexes where the players discovered locations with new locations. That keeps the work a lot more manageable.
If you want to be safe, you could push it and put two locations in each hex, but honestly I think it’s fine putting just one location in each. Though that’s not to say you should feel bound by whatever your standard is. If one of your hexes is special for some reason, put as many locations in that hex as you like. Overall, though, it’s best to keep the standard number of locations per hex as low as possible.
Finally, what other information should be included in a hex crawl? I’d probably throw an overview in the front with a brief description of the region, its history, and the forces that are at play there. Something to keep short and sweet, since most of the flavor should be communicated through hex content and encounters. This is also where I’d make note of any particularly important and well known locations, like a large city in Hex XXX. The sort of thing everyone the players meet would be aware of, and which the players themselves might be on their way to reach.
I’d also write about any notable environs, particularly if they span multiple hexes. If the cluster of 8 forest hexes in the south of the map is “The Forest of Doom,” where gremlins sneak about through a persistent chest-height pink mist, that’s something the referee should be warned of up-front so they know to mention it as soon as the PCs enter that hex, even if they don’t think to check the hex’s information.
That’s everything I can think of for now. I don’t know if this has been a useful document for anyone else, but I have to say the process of writing it has made me feel more confident about preparing and running hex crawls, which is something I’m in the middle of doing right now.
Next week will be the first in a 7 part series of posts where I stock a hex map. In point of fact, this post started its life as a footnote on the first entry of that series.
Good dungeons have nigh-incoherent architecture. They exist to challenge players, which is the exact opposite design goal to just about any structure that exists in real life. This is why dungeons with realistic layouts are usually as dull as a -2 dagger. It’s also why most attempts to explain why a dungeon exists are embarrassing to endure.
None the less, giving a dungeon some reason to exist is incredibly useful for informing its development. There’s a few classic explanations that try to lend an understandable intent to the incoherent architecture: catacombs, temples, mad wizards, etc. All are tried-and-true ideas that do the job well enough, but sometimes it’s fun to reinvent the wheel.
The dungeon predates the world. Its shape correlates to mysteries of creation beyond the scope of an adventurer to even think about. It floated in space for eons before drifting into a gathering ball of dust that became our world.
A space ship which crashed here in ages long past. The auto-repair function was severely damaged, resulting in the difficult-to-navigate interior.
The dungeon has not actually been built yet. The structure of it moves backwards through time. It was destroyed long ago, and in the future someone will build it. Examining the architecture may reveal some clues about what is to come.
Built by a species of architect ant, which is compelled to create dungeons.
When the goblin wars ended, the two races came to terms. The races of men could have the surface, but only if they built a home for goblinkind beneath the earth.
The dungeon was built in an earlier age by a religion which still exists. It is a sacred site, but because many of its secrets have been lost to time, it is dangerous to explore.
The dungeon is alive. It builds itself. It reacts.
The dungeon is a board game for gods. They got bored with it when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, and have forgotten where they left it.
Built as a kind of rat’s maze, by a powerful cosmic entity. This is not hidden. Everybody knows that when you enter this dungeon, you’re being watched and tested. People go in anyway because the “cheese” is legitimately bounteous treasures.
Built by dinosaurs, who foresaw their death and the dominance of disgusting ape creatures. They built it and placed their greatest treasures within it to tempt as many of us as possible to our deaths.
Built by a guild of engineers and architects, as a showcase of their many and varied skills.
Eroded into existence by spiteful river spirits.
The biggest, most elaborate sex dungeon of all time. Built by the ruler of a sexocracy.
Was a facility for containing creatures and objects with dangerous abilities and unknown purpose. There was a breakout long ago, so many of these things have long since escaped into the world, and may even be widely known and considered normal today. (Perhaps nobody got cancer, pregnancy was easy, and human lifespan was triple what it is now). Some of the safeguards are still here and dangerous, some of the anomalies are still here and dangerous. Some of them are still contained, and the world is better for it. Dungeon should list some stuff that used to be better before the breakout.
Conquered locals were forced to build a palace for their new distant ruler. They intentionally built it to be dangerous and confusing for their oppressors.
An active temple for the god of foolhardy death. Attempting to plunder the temple is an act of religious devotion. At least, that’s what the priests say. Everyone else figures it’s just an elaborate form of human sacrifice. Sure, a few might make it out with fabulous wealth, but far more will perish in the attempt.
Built in ancient times by a jealous nation. They built this labyrinth in hopes it would be listed as one of the wonders of the world.
A subterranean civilization, digging up, did not realize eventually the earth would end and give way into the terrifying sky. Believing they had discovered hell, they created the most complicated maze of passages and rooms they could, to prevent the creatures from this terrible place from finding their way down into the wholesome lands below.
A time capsule, created to commemorate the 1,000th year of a city’s founding. It is meant to showcase their culture and civilization. And to play a few pranks on the naughty futuremen.
Some folks believe in craftsmanship. It doesn’t matter if nobody will ever see a thing, you still make it as beautiful and intricate as you can. Even if all you’re making is a sewer system, you do something to make that sewer system stand out. If not to people, then to god, who sees everything.
The structure of the dungeon is incredibly precise shape. A sort of ‘magic circle,” (though it is not a circle) used in an ancient summoning to create the moon.
A prince ordered the dungeon built long ago as a trial to test the valor of his potential suitors.
The holy temple of maturity. Before a girl of this tribe can be considered a woman, she must present a plan for a new corridor or room, and build it with her own two hands. She may be instructed, but never aided.
An alien algorithm meant for creating video games got ahold of some nanobots, sent them to our world, and built a dungeon for real.
Knowing they would be conquered when the campaigning season began, a whole civilization dedicated themselves to building this dungeon as a way of preventing their conquerors from ever finding their treasure. They sold their souls for magics. The whole treasures of their people are visible from the very first room, but are behind and impenetrable wall of death.
A structure built to trap a god, while still showing that god proper respect.
The dungeon itself is a kind of computer, and those who attempt to navigate it advance its computations through their actions. Once enough people have attempted to plunder it, the problem will be solved. It’s unclear what happens then.
There is a creature which gestates in dungeons, the way a bird gestates in an egg. The parent created this place to foster their child.
Once, men were at peace with a strange race, with strange needs. They built an embassy here, to better maintain relations. Eventually, though, peace broke down, and the two races parted ways. Only the embassy is left, as hostile to human life as it was necessary to theirs.
To play D&D in space, you need space ships which retain the individual agency of the players, even as they are all stuck inside a single vessel with a single pool of hit points. I first proposed my space ship system back in July of 2017, with a revision to the system coming just a week later. At the time, this was all theoretical. Now that I’ve been running Fuck the King of Space for a few months, I can tell that there’s something worth exploring here, but some tweaks are definitely needed.
Also, it has been annoying to have the system spread across two contradictory posts. I often meet people who are interested in the system, but put off by the way it is presented. So this post will explain space ships, as they exist now, in full detail.
And I do mean full detail. If you’d like a concise version of the 4,000+ words I’ve written below, check out the FKOS player document linked above. Ship rules are on pages 20 and 21. This post will include all the details too trivial to include there, as well as explanations of my thought process.
The Spaceship
Space ships are like characters. The ones controlled by the players will need a character sheet, probably managed by the referee. NPC ships need fewer details, and can be represented by as little as a statline.
Player ships have 8 basic variables to track.
Hit Dice: A measure of the ship’s build quality. This will probably start at 1 for any ship the players would have access to.
Hull Points: An abstraction of the ship’s ability to absorb damage before its systems start to break down. A ship’s hull points advance as a fighter’s, starting at 8, and increasing by 3 with each additional hit die.
Space: How much space is available on the ship for systems, modules, and cargo. It doesn’t only measure the internal volume of the vessel, but also how much weight the superstructure is able to support. (This is why external systems, like mechanical arms, still take up space)
A small ship would have 15-25 space inside of it. This would typically be a 1 or 2 man ship, with internal space ranging from a single seat, to the size of a studio apartment.
A moderately sized ship would have 26-50 space in it. These are your cargo vessels, your personal yachts, etc. They’ll have enough room for a crew to live and work, to carry cargo, or to serve as a platform for weapons.
A large ship would be anything with more than 50 space. These are mostly military ships. Weapons platforms, troop transports, flying fortresses, and even carriers which ferry around smaller ships inside of them.
As players tinker with their ship, adding or removing modules, the available space is likely to change relatively frequently. It is most helpful to express a ship’s space as a fraction: [Currently Used] / [Total]
Cargo Space: The difference between the currently used and total space on a ship. Anything left over once the ship’s systems are accounted for is how much room the ship has to haul cargo. The referee should track this between sessions. If the ship is ever carrying too much, the players will need to decide what they left behind before the start of play next session.
Maneuverability: The total amount of space a ship has determines its size category, as explained above. A ship’s size category determines its maneuverability. Small ships have 6, moderately sized ships have 3, large ships have 0. This will be the target number of any attacks made against the ship, modified by distance, and pilot skill.
Speed: Determined by the ship’s engines. For most vessels, it is 1 AU.
Power: Also determined by the ship’s engines, usually at a rate of 1 power per 1 space the engine takes up on the vessel. Most of a ship’s systems require power to operate, with the exception of things like living quarters and the cockpit. If the ship ever seems to have too many systems active at once, the referee should pause the action to take quick inventory of the party’s power usage.
For the sake of simplicity, most systems will work as described using only one power to operate. However, players can put extra power into a system to try an eke some extra functionality out of it.
For convenience, the referee may want to mark some of a ship’s systems as “assumed active.” Things like Life Support, and Artificial Gravity. Power can then be noted as a fraction: [Available Power] / [Total Power]. This will speed up the process of taking inventory whenever that needs to be done.
Fuel: Explicitly, this refers to the material a ship’s engine uses to generate power. But, it could also also be abstracted to include food and water. Each ship has a fuel tank which can store 10 fuel per 1 space it takes up. A point of fuel is consumed anytime the ship passes into a new hex or engages in space combat.
Improving a Ship
Most frequently, ships are improved by adding or upgrading their modules. You can think of modules as a ship’s tools and equipment. Where a player might carry a rope and wear leather armor, a ship might have a mechanical arm and a missile interception drone. Likewise, while a player might eventually upgrade to silk rope and plate armor, a ship might upgrade to tractor beams and energy shields.
The other way ships improve is by raising their hit dice, and thus, their hull points. This is done by overhauling a ship’s superstructure in a repair dock. To determine the cost, refer to the Fighter’s experience table, and multiply the experience requirement by 10.
So, to reach 2 hit dice requires 20,000 money. To reach 3 hit dice requires 40,000 money, and so on. This is exorbitantly expensive for two reasons.
First, as the ship is a shared resource, it is assumed the player’s will pool their money to improve it, and the cost must be a commensurate challenge. Second, because of the way combat works, it is highly desirable that ships are always in imminent danger of reaching 0hp, as this is where players will need to make the most interesting choices.
Spaceship Movement
A ship’s speed determines its local movement, measured in Astronomical Units, or AU. AU are an abstraction of the relative distance between objects. 3 dimensional space can be difficult to describe in exact terms, so it is sufficient for the referee to say “You are 2 AU away from the enemy ship, and 3 AU away from the planet’s gravity well.” Players will not describe their movement in terms of “North” or “South,” but rather, “Towards” or “Away” from points of reference.
No matter how fast a ship is locally, its interstellar movement rate is 1 hex at a time. Each hex of movement consumes 1 fuel, and prompts a roll of the hazard die. Space may be a vast empty void, but it’s more interesting if there’s stuff to encounter out there.
Ships equipped with a Jump Drive may skip the hazard roll, and travel quickly to any desired point in the galaxy. However, this requires 3 fuel per hex crossed.
Spaceship Combat
In most respects, ship combat works the same way combat normally does. Players who are operating weapon modules roll a d20. Their goal is to roll equal to or higher than their target’s maneuverability, which is modified by the skill roll of its pilot. Note that pilots make only a single roll each round, which establishes the target number for every attack made against their ship until the next round.
Attack rolls are modified by any native bonus the weapon operator may have. They also suffer a -1 penalty for every AU of distance between the attacker and the target. (Ships may close to 0 AU from one another to avoid this penalty.) Weapons may be set to fire automatically, but doing so requires at least one player to spend an action identifying valid targets. Automated weapons suffer a -2 penalty to attack.
When weapons hit, the attacking player rolls a d6 for damage, which is subtracted from the enemy vessel’s hull points. Hull points can only be restored by visiting a space dock, and each point of restoration costs 250 Darics. Ships can only be damaged by ship-scale weapons. Weapons small enough to be wielded by an individual character cannot typically affect a ship.
When a ship reaches 0hp, it is not destroyed. If a hit would reduce a ship below 0 hp, it is reduced to 0hp instead. Once a ship is at 0hp, additional hits affect the ship’s systems directly.
For each hit, the referee should roll to randomly determine one of the ship’s modules. Damage is then rolled normally, and that damage is applied both to the module, and to any character who was in that module or operating that system.
Damaged modules do not function, but they can be repaired. Each round, characters can make an engineering check to repair a system. If they succeed, they remove 2 damage from the system, if they fail, they only remove 1. If the system takes more damage while they are repairing it, they take that damage as well. Once a system has 0 damage, it can be brought back online at any time.
If a system or module takes 10 or more damage, then it is too mangled to be repaired in combat. Each engineering check to repair will take 1 hour of time, and will require access to the outside of the ship.
If a system or module takes 20 or more damage, it cannot be repaired in the field. The players will need to visit a repair dock.
Note that, using this system, it is actually very difficult for a ship to be destroyed. In fact, there is no explicit way to destroy a ship. There are two reasons for this.
First, it is much more interesting for the players to try and persist with a thoroughly disabled ship, than it is for them to simply die. Second, when everyone is sharing the same island of habitability in an endless void of death, a destroyed ship is an instant TPK. Running a game with lethality that high seems like a chore to me.
Modules & Systems
As noted above, a ship’s modules & systems are analogous to a character’s equipment. And, like equipment, players are meant to use them creatively. Just as a rope could be used for climbing, or creating a tripline, or making a lasso; so too can a ship’s artificial gravity be used to keep people on the ground, or to increase everybody’s weight tenfold, or to shove them up against the ceiling.
The goal here is to make sure every character can find something to do with themselves. It’s no fun if the pilot decides where we go, and the gunners decide what we shoot, and everybody else is just sitting in the back seat making suggestions. They should be able to tinker with systems, alter the way they work, or juice them up with extra power to make them do something beyond their normal capabilities.
This list is suggestive, not exhaustive.
Basic & Essential Modules
Engine (Variable Space)
Engines both produce a ship’s power, and consume some of that power to create thrust. Most engines produce 1 power for every unit of space they take up, and can provide 1 AU of speed for every point of power put back into them. Though, more advanced engines that improve on those numbers may exist.
Most engines take up 5 space (and, thus, produce 5 power). Engines of this size cost 4,000 Darics. Successively larger engines increase in cost by 50% for every extra unit of space/power they have. So, an engine which produced 6 power would cost 6,000 Darics. An engine that produced 7 power would cost 9,000 Darics. Engines sell for 1/2 their purchase price.
There is no way to ‘upgrade’ an existing engine to provide more power, nor can multiple engines work effectively in tandem with one another. To improve a ship’s engines, an entirely new engine must be purchased.
Jump Drive (1 Space)
Allows a ship to accelerate beyond the speed of light, traversing years of distance in mere hours. Jump drives function only in open space. If a ship attempts to jump while in a gravity well, or if they pass through a gravity well during a jump, their engine will shut down.
Because space is a vast empty void, any malfunction could leave a ship stranded in the literal middle of nowhere. With no chance of rescue, the crew would be lost for all time. To minimize this risk, Jumps are carefully planned to pass within communications range of as many inhabited worlds as possible. Making these calculations in any sort of reasonable time-span requires a navigation computer.
Navigation Computer (1 Space)
Without a NaviComp, plotting a course takes 2 hours per hex the jump will cross. With one, a safe jump to any location in the galaxy can be plotted within 10 minutes.
In an emergency, NaviComps can be used to calculate short-range (1 hex) jumps in as little as 1 minute, but there is a 1-in-6 chance the ship will encounter a hazard if this is attempted. When this happens, the ship’s hull points will be reduced to 0, and every system will take 5 points of damage.
In the most dire of emergencies, players may attempt to plot a 1-hex jump in a single round. If the players are mad enough to try this, have them roll a d6. If a 6 is rolled, the jump completes successfully. On a 2-5, the ship encounters a hazard as described above. On a 1, the jump fails almost immediately. The ship moves 1d6 AU from where it started, and both the engine and the Jump Drive take 15 damage.
Cockpit (1 Space)(No Power Required)
Essential for any ship. The cockpit houses the piloting controls, and may have several other control stations in it as well. Any character is capable of performing the basic functions of piloting a ship, but when attempting particularly tricky maneuvers, or trying to evade enemy fire, there’s no substitute for a trained pilot.
Artificial Gravity (1 Space)
Beneath the deck plates of most ships are microgravity generators. Tiny things, individually cheap, arranged in a latticework to create a simulation of comfortable gravity within the relatively tiny space between the floor and ceiling of a space ship’s rooms.
Without gravity, it is very difficult to move around inside of a ship. Particularly because ships have not been designed to to be navigated without gravity since pre-history. Meaningful rest in a ship without gravity is basically impossible.
Atmosphere Recycler (1 Space)
Maintains oxygen and heat to human comfort throughout the ship. Without it, the crew would need to wear environment suits to survive.
If the AtmoRecycler loses power, conditions will degrade rapidly. One minute after the system loses power (10 turns), everyone within the ship has their maximum hit points reduced to what their max was at 1st level. Additionally, actions take twice as long to attempt as normal.
For each successive minute this condition persists, maximum hit points are reduced by 1, and the number of rounds required for an action is increased by 1.
So, after 1 minute, a fighter’s maximum hit points would be 8, and it would take them 2 rounds to make a single repair check. After 2 minutes, their max hp would be 7, and it would take 3 rounds to make a repair check, so on, and so forth.
Communications (2 Space)
Basic units allow for communication with anything in the same hex as you. If there is a relay satellite within range, you may be able to connect to a larger communications network.
More powerful comm systems exist, which allow connection to be made with even more distant recipients.
Sensors (2 Space)
Allows the operator to discover information about their environment. Can scan up to 1 AU away for every point of power pumped into the system.
Without sensors, players are limited to what information is transmitted to them directly, and what they can see with their eyes out the viewports. They may not even be aware of an enemy ship until it’s in the same AU that they are.
Housing for People and Objects
Living Quarters (Variable Space)(No Power Required)
Can house 3 people for every 1 unit of space. Without these, characters cannot rest to recover hit points on the ship.
Brig (Variable Space)(No Power Required)
Can house 2 prisoners for every 1 unit of space.
Magic Laboratory (Variable Space)(No Power Required)
Functions as any magic laboratory. Shipboard labs require 1 space for every 5,000 total value they have.
Science Laboratory (2 Space)
Allows characters to perform scientific analysis or research on their ship.
Cryogenics (Variable Space)
Requires 1 space and 1 power for every 2 frozen people. If power to this room is lost, each frozen person has a 1-in-6 chance to die, re-rolled every hour.
Docking Bay (Variable Space)(Does not require any power)
Docking bays may be any size, but must be at least 1 space larger than the total space of all the ships it will contain.
Docking bays are often left open to space, with only a mag-shield keeping heat and atmosphere contained. (Even so, they tend to be chilly). If need be, they do have sliding doors which can move into place.
Escape Pod (3 Space)(Does not require any power)
Each pod can house 2 people. They have minimal life support, 3 fuel, 1AU thrusters, no Jump Drive, minimal sensors, a robust communications package, and food to last about a week.
Useful Doohickeys
Autopilot (1 Space)
Autopilots are computers which can operate the ship in lieu of a living pilot. The most common, affordable autopilots have no piloting skill to roll at all, automatically rolling a ‘0’ any time a roll is called for. More advanced autopilots have a d4, d6, d8, or d10 pilot skill. Autopilots with d12 skill have not yet been invented, and even a d10 autopilot is extraordinarily rare and expensive.
Door Blast Shielding (1 Space)
Without power, this central control allows individual doors to be opened, close, locked, and unlocked remotely. When powered, this system generates a shield around each door, making them dramatically more difficult to force open.
Fire Suppression System (1 Space)
Fires on a space ship are a very bad thing. Without a robust fire suppression system, the only reliable way to put one out is to vent the area into space, which gets the job done, but also causes you to lose anything that wasn’t nailed down on a path between the airlock and the fire.
If the system is already active when the fire starts, it will automatically activate when needed.
Cloak (5 Space)
Blocks all incoming sensors, AND outgoing sensors. Makes a ship invisible, but blind. This hindrance may be circumvented by an external sensor drone, or by a significantly more advanced cloak.
Hacking Station (2 Space)
Emits a special, penetrating signal which allows hacking to be attempted across the void of space. When operating normally, the system works at 0 AU. It may be overpowered to extend its range.
Arms (2 Space per Arm)
Tractor beams are expensive. Mechanical arms mounted on the exterior of the ship allow the operator to directly manipulate objects within the ship’s immediate vicinity.
Tractor Beam (1 Space Per Beam)
If you can afford them, tractor beams are superior to mechanical arms in nearly every way. As an energy-based manipulator, they have greater flexibility, range of motion, strength, responsiveness, and even take up less room. Just about the only drawbacks are that they must have line of sight (rarely a problem in open space), and that they can be disrupted more easily than physical arms can.
ExoPod (2 Space)
A small, 1 person pod with thrusters to allow it to move independently of its host ship. Power, atmosphere, etc are provided to the ExoPod via a cabel, which can reach up to 1 AU away from the ship. Weapons may be mounted on the ExoPod if the players so desire.
Gravity Well Generator (12 Space)
Creates a miniature gravity well, preventing any ship from engaging a jump drive within 30 AU. Can also be used to drag ships out of a jump, if the operator can predict their path. Being pulled from a jump unexpectedly works like encountering a hazard, as described in the Navigation Computer module above.
Weapons & Armor
Shields (5 Space)
Shields reduce incoming damage by a set amount. Usually 1, though more advanced shields may be available. If a player specifically orients the shields in a specific direction (fore, aft, port, starboard, up, or down), then their effectiveness is doubled in that direction, and completely removed in all other directions.
Blaster Cannon (1 Space)
A basic weapon which, like all weapons, deals d6 damage. Multi-barrel variants exist, including dual-, tri-, and quad-. Each additional barrel multiplies the price by 2x, and increases the critical range of the weapon by 1. (So a dual blaster cannon crits on a 19 or 20, etc.)
Halberd Laser
Has a maximum effective range of 2AU. If the target vessel is at 0 hull points, the Halberd can be used to target 2 different systems with the same attack. Overcharging the laser may allow for additional systems to be hit.
Space Torpedo
Firing a torpedo first requires that the operator spend a round establishing a target lock. This is done by making an attack roll. On a successful ‘hit,’ the lock is established, and the torpedo can be fired next round. Torpedos bypass any shields a target may have.
Flak Cannon
Designed to overload a ship’s shields, and temporarily take them down. Can only be used at 0 AU from the target. On a successful hit, the target’s shields are down for 1d6 rounds before they can recharge.
Drones
Drone Control System (2 space + 1 per Drone)(No Power Required)
A prerequisite for a ship to be able to operate drones. By itself, the control system requires no power. However, each active drone does require power. Not because it is drawing power from the ship, but because the Drone Control System needs power in order to operate an active drone.
Anti-Missile Drone
Equipped with auto-trackers, and a highly specialized non-damaging laser. Combines its own data with that of its mother ship to perfectly triangulate incoming missiles, and trick them into detonating early. Has a 4-in-6 chance of success, and may attempt to shoot down up to 2 missiles each round.
Probe
Equipped with a full range of sensors. Can be sent out at a speed of 1AU per round, or may be left in a fixed position. Probes are difficult to detect (d12 stealth), and will relay information back to their mother ship up to 1 hex away, assuming no interference.
Weapon Platform Drone
Must be equipped with a weapon. Drone may be placed at any location within 10 AU of the mother ship. The weapon can be operated remotely, or given a set of automated instructions (with the usual penalties).
Repair Drone
A robot on magnetic treads. When activated, it will pop out of its nook, and trundle to the nearest damaged system to begin repairs. It is able to repair 1 damage each round it works.
Sample Character Sheet
This is the sheet I maintain for my players’ ship in Fuck the King of Space. Modules I’ve marked with “ON” are those which I assume the players have running unless they say otherwise. Modules marked with an X are those which do not require any power to function.
After each session, I update the sheet to show the hit points, space, cargo, and fuel the players ended the session with. I then share the updated sheet with my players, so they know whether they need to urgently take care of any issues.
The Bosco HD 1 HP 8/8 Space 29/45 Cargo: 2/16 (2 space are secure) Maneuverability 3 Speed 1 AU Power 4/7 Fuel 30/30
Nobody wants to bother with a full sheet for every NPC they encounter, let alone every ship. If the amount of fuel another ship has becomes relevant, the referee can make a roll. The pre-prepared information should stick to what is most likely to be relevant. Something like this:
Modules: 2 Blaster Cannons, Cockpit, Engines, AtmoRecycler, Gravity Generator, Sensors, Communications, JumpDrive, NavComp, Door Blast Shielding, Escape Pod
It may seem tedious to list out all the basic stuff (cockpit, engines…) but it’ll make things easier when it comes time to randomly determine which systems are hit in combat.
Conclusions
I recognize this system is far from perfect, but I think it’s more on the right track than any other space ship system I’ve read. It accommodates most of the things that interest me when I think about battles in space; and it does so without being a clusterfuck of complexity.
That being said, there are some flaws I have not yet addressed. The big one is that there’s no provision for players saying “target their weapons!” I suppose I might be fine with it if the target ship were at 0hp, but then, it seems uncool that players are allowed to make such decisions, while NPCs have to roll randomly. I could let NPCs make the decision as well, but then I don’t think there would be as many interesting results. Why disable a ship’s gravity when you could disable their engines?
Complexity is another thing that worries me. This system isn’t nuts, but it’s not exactly rules-lite either. I have a tendency to over-complicate things initially, then gradually shave away everything superfluous. I’ve already done that with this system to some extent, but it still feels a little heavy.
“Balance” is another sticking point. By which I mean “what numbers should I assign to things in order to achieve the results I want?”
For example, earlier drafts of this system had the basic engine being a size 10 (both space and power). I eventually noticed that this never forced the players to make any hard decisions about which systems had power. When I started FKOS, I reduced this to 5, but the players quickly went out to purchase additional engines, which led to the rule I came up with for this revision that engines must be replaced entirely in order to upgrade.
Furthermore, the system is notably incomplete. Modules lack prices (because of that same uncertainty about numbers), the weapons are underdeveloped and bland. There are a lot of questions I haven’t had to answer yet. Eventually I’ll probably make a snap judgement ruling at the table, and immediately regret it.
A little bit ago, I was looking for sources on a post I was writing, and I stumbled on this challenge issued by Kiel back in 2015. Essentially, it’s a call for referees to revel in self-indulgence by writing up a bunch of details for their setting that players probably won’t care about. I never saw this at the time, but after 3 years I think we’re long past due to try for it again.
And since this is one of those dumb “tag three people” things, I have chosen Red Flanagan, Chris H. and Tore Nielson to follow my bad example and post their own self-indulgent campaign world exposition. I’ll turn each of those names into a link when the associated person answers the call.
Since I have two big active campaigns–On a Red World Alone and Fuck the King of Space–it only seems appropriate to perform this exercise for both of them. But I will not punish you by spreading this out over two posts. Below are 20 random facts about my campaign worlds, 10 from each active campaign.
On a Red World Alone
1 – Penelope the Seleucid is older than anyone realizes. Old enough that her name is an accurate and literal description of her. She was one of the few magicians who had mastered the craft prior to humanity’s transplantation to the red world. She predicted that mars would bring about a revolution in wizardry, and even encouraged some of her contemporaries to join her in emigrating, but only she was will to abandon her existing power structures on the dubious promise of increased access to magic. By the time anyone realized just how profoundly mars impacted the abilities of magicians, Earth was a field of rubble in space.
Penelope has fostered generations of apprentices in the dome, and guided the magic community into its current form. She is well known and respected by the highest class of wizards, but rarely spoken of since she retreated from public life some 150 years ago.
2 – Most working technology is due to the efforts of Techno Priests. This strange sect have a series of rituals based on tech support manuals. Acolytes first learn to check if a thing is plugged in, and to turn it off, then back on again. The most learned priests carry soldering irons like scepters, and can perform rudimentary circuit board repairs with them. Even the highest ranking among them, however, don’t actually understand why what they’re doing works. It’s just rote ritual to them.
3 – Occasionally, a form of mutated human will become consistent enough that it could be called a species unto itself. Morthuks were one such mutation. Slime-skinned things, with soft bones, and overall too sensitive harm–physical and emotional. They were deeply distrusted due to their moderate ability to plant suggestions in people’s minds. Sixty years ago, after a rash of suicides were blamed on them, they were subject to a series of pogroms which were thought to have wiped them out.
When the Internet came into existence, they made a point to gather up every specimen still extant; those living in the depths of the sewers, or in the private menageries of various Wizards and Redstone Lords. They managed to collect a breeding population of 12 of the things, but were never able to make use of them in any meaningful way. The creatures were eventually forgotten about and–recently–escaped.
Using their ability to make suggestions, as well as by espousing a platform of Mutant Supremacy, they were quickly able to establish a sizable little territory for themselves, which they dubbed New Morthuka.
4 – When Mongrel the Magician was killed by The Breakfast Club, the many ape-men he had created to be his servants didn’t have anywhere to go, but knew they wanted to stick together. They made their way out of Comet Caller territory (where they would doubtless be dissected by someone eager to learn Mongrel’s secrets), towards the edges of Outsider territory. There they constructed a barricade wall for themselves, turning the center of a 5-way intersection into a private encampment they dubbed “Ape City.” The locals hate them for their travel-disrupting walls, but the Outsiders themselves are loathe to get involved. It is really on the outer edges of their concern, after all. Besides, they have a certain respect for the ape men’s resolve. The Highlander actually quite interested in how the Ape Men might be put to use to serve Outsider interests.
5 – The sewers beneath the dome are bizarrely labyrinthine. The Dome is, after all, a planned settlement. The first brick was not laid until the whole thing had been thoroughly diagrammed in every aspect. Why, then, do its sewers snake back and forth in maddening patterns?
The truth is, the ‘sewers’ were already present when the surveyors first arrived on Mars to scout out a suitable location to build. Everyone who knew about this considered it fortuitous. Think of all the money they’d save! For unknown reasons, it never occurred to anyone who knew this fact to consider how strange it was for these sewers to be there. But it did seem obvious that their presence should be kept secret. I mean, right? Finding mysterious structures on an uninhabited world just seems like the sort of thing you don’t share with people.
6 – There are a number of space stations in orbit above Mars. One was meant to serve as port for ships to come and go from, to limit the number of vessels that had to do the expensive work of dropping down onto, and coming up from, the Martian surface. Others housed communication, observation, and operation facilities. With no ready source to replenish their fuel, these were abandoned within a few years of the catastrophe that destroyed earth, with only robots left up there to man them.
The signal codes meant to command those robots have long since been discovered and used by the Internet, to no avail whatsoever. If the machines are still operating up there, they’re no longer listening.
7 – The Internet, as an official organization, has existed for roughly 15 years. It was originally founded as a sort of non-aggression pact between rival wizards. Among those working to understand technology and become Techno-Wizards, the _Brain Drain_ spell became an endemic problem. Every year, promising researchers were found with their minds drained of all knowledge by some rival.
When the constitution of the Internet was signed, there were only two immutable laws put down. First, _Brain Drain_ was banned completely, regardless of subject. Even having the spell inscribed in your library was forbidden. Second, it was decided that no one outside the Internet’s control should be permitted to understand technology.
Unbeknownst to the Techno Priests, Internet conspirators have worked to inject several doctrines into their faith. Most notably, it is heresy to try and understand technology without strict adherence to the rote memorizations of the support manuals.
8 – Legally, the Dukes of the Dome are not a single territory. They’re a confederation, united by a mutual defense pact against the larger territories that surround them. In practice, only the Dukes themselves care about their individual microterritories anymore, some of which are little more than a single building. The common people tire of the squabbling between dukes that occurs whenever there is no external threat. They have a strong shared culture, and a unification movement is growing in strength. Particularly now, after so much territory was lost in wars against The Redstone Lords, Technotopia, and New Morthuka in the last two years.
Some of the more powerful dukes are quietly courting the movement, believing their own power might be increased. The weaker dukes are fiercely opposed, believing that unification for them will be no different from outright conquest.
9 – In the last days of Earth, retro technology was all the rage. Everybody had an old Apple ][ or IBM 486 to play with. (All retrofitted with modern cold microfusion power sources, of course). As a result, technology in the post apocalyptic dome is wildly anachronistic. USB Flash Drives exist, and they’re great, but sometimes all a person is going to be able to find to store their data on is a CD, or floppy disk. And with no new computers being manufactured, sometimes that’s got to be good enough.
10 – Nearly everyone in the dome was raised “Beneath the Black.” It’s the dominant religion, though there are a number of others (including the TechnoFaith).
Preachers Beneath the Black tell us that the black sky above is a benevolent blanket of protection, holding back the white hot fires of destruction that wish to destroy all life. What we call “stars,” are holes pierced that have been pierced through this protective curtain by the sins of man.
Fuck the King of Space
1 – Distant Tumon is the god worshiped by The Most Reverent Faithful. The church wields significant power in the Kingdom Galactic, with an entire bureaucracy existing alongside the King’s. Only the lowliest priests are not members of the 36,000 families, and those who aren’t see an instantaneous leap in their status within the Kingdom.
For millennia, the King was also the Ur Flamen of the Church. However, “independence for the priesthood” was the pretense under which Kulga “Bloodfist” Osbert waged the wars which brought the current Osbert dynasty to power. Thus, the Most Reverent Faithful have a vested interest in maintaining the legitimacy of the crown–though they are aware that if the crown is ever too discredited, some future warlord might start a war to “return the office of the King to its traditional religious dignity,” or some such thing.
Given how terrible a King Bassiana Osbert is turning out to be, the Church has been forced to walk a political tightrope these last few years.
2 – A few hundred years back, some schismatic nobles lost their bid to establish some change that nobody remembers, and went into a self-imposed exile. They made a big to-do of finding the first world–Earth–and building their castles there. No one much cared at the time, and after so many years, the only ones who even know about it are those descendants still living in the castles of earth.
3 – The King is a classic Tiberius figure. She’s checked out of the day-to-days of her kingdom, indulging her own hedonism and leaving the busywork of rulership to more interested men and women. As such, the de facto highest authority in the Kingdom Galactic is the Table of Invested Citizens, a group of the 11 wealthiest Nobles alive.
4 – Every unit of the King’s Loyal Soldiers (KLS) has one former criminal in it. These criminals have had parts of their brain surgically removed, and replaced with lab-grown grey matter, which makes them unfaltering loyal to the King. The idea is that this will ensure no unit can easily turn traitor, since any which tries will have a strong core of loyalty either to dissuade them, or report on their plans.
In reality, these hyperloyals are easy to spot, easy to avoid, and even easier to fool. Soldiers learn how to manage their local nark quickly, just to facilitate the normal lapses in discipline common to any military unit. The program is thus completely ineffective, but it plays well with conservative, out-of-touch nobles.
5 – It’s something of a popular myth that the 36,000 families or an organization of merit. It’s the Great Galactic Dream: if you work hard, fight hard, and make hard sacrifices, someday your family may be elevated to join their ranks. It’s a myth that’s easy to perpetrate, as there are too many families for most people to keep track of.
In truth, nearly all 36,000 families derive their position from ancient bloodlines, meticulously traced back further than most reliable histories are able to go. Only the lowest 300 ranks of the nobility are any kind of meritocracy, and those are not granted for hard work, great sacrifice, or heroism in war. They are sold to the highest bidder, and held for only so long as a family remains prosperous enough to afford them.
6 – Bluesidian is a teal mineral. It’s brittle like stone, but can be melted down and forged like a metal. It has little practical purpose, and thus is used almost entirely to create artistic displays of ostentatious wealth. It is also occasionally used in transactions where Darics are too trivial a currency to bother with. A loaf of bread or a space ship can be purchased with Darics. If you want to buy or sell whole worlds, you deal in bluesidian.
7 – The galaxy is full of countless alien species. Unfortunately for them, none managed to develop space travel before they were discovered by the rapidly expanding human race. Or, if they did have space travel, they were too peaceful, or too weak to put up much of a fight when Humanity decided to show them who was boss.
At first, humanity dominated these ‘rivals’ with superior technology. The implemented one absolute law for non-humans, which stands to this day: they can never settle off their world of origin, save by the explicit permission of the king. The punishment for disobedience is genocide.
In modern times, the difference in technology between humans and non-humans is much less pronounced. Though, aliens are legally barred from access to the most modern high technologies. However, millennia of the One-World policy has led to a different sort of imbalance. Humanity as an inconceivably overwhelming advantage in numbers. If every non-human were counted together, they would amount to less than one third of the galaxy’s human population. The KLS alone outnumber the entire population of any dozen races taken together.
8 – “Magic” is the word used to describe anything that completely defies the scientific method. Magic cannot be repeated. Each time a spell is cast, it has to be done slightly differently. It’s not really accurate to describe a magician as “knowing” a spell. Rather, a magician becomes familiar enough with the feel of a spell, that they gain an intuition about it. In a given moment, at a given galactic position, they can work out what needs to be done to make that spell work. But what they did could never produce the same result again, no matter how identical the material conditions were replicated.
9 – The CommNet is so heavily regulated and censored, that it can’t really be used for much of interest or import. Much more useful is the RatNet, (short for Pirate Network), maintained by a dedicated contingent of relay ship operators. They’re forced to constantly move about to stay ahead of the KLS, and CommNet Men, without ever leaving the sector their relay ship serves. It’s the closest thing that exists to an organized resistance to the established order on a galactic scale. Though, few running the RatNet has any such grandiose ambitions.
It’s always tricky to access the RatNet. A hacking check is required just to log in. And you never know how strong your connection will be, since your local relay ship might be close by, or it might be on the other side of the sector.
10 – A few centuries back, the Guild of Robot Craftspeople successfully lobbied to outlaw human slavery. Limited indenture is still a common punishment for many crimes, but only where a clear and feasible path out of indenture exists.
This is a great source of frustration to the Union of Sapient Machines, which doesn’t see why low-class humans deserve a special dispensation not afforded to low-class robots.
A few months back I wrote about how conspiracies fit into my game. Little mysteries sprinkled into the background, obfuscated to the point where they’re really just something I do for myself. Within a week or two of posting that, I found myself in a relevant conversation with John Bell. He argued that it was better to develop campaigns around a central problem, rather than a central mystery.
That dichotomy has been bouncing around in my head ever since. It feels true to me. It’s not necessarily in conflict with the way I run conspiracies, but when I look back over the many campaigns I’ve run in the past, mysteries are consistently more central than problems are. Dungeon Moon is the only exception to this, where the clearly stated central problem was “How do we get off of Dungeon Moon?”
Players understand how to engage with problems. Problem solving is what the game is built on. It only makes sense that the room-to-room or hex-to-hex problems they encounter while adventuring exist in the shadow of some great looming problem that lends a suggested direction to play.
In particular, what is great about problems compared to mysteries (this was John’s main point), is that they allow for a healthier flow of information. With a mystery, the referee has to be a little anxious about how much they give away. If the players get too much information, the mystery is ruined. Almost by necessity, the referee has to err on the side withholding too much, rather than revealing too much. Much as I enjoy weaving a mystery into the game here and there, this stifled information flow is anathema to my general principles. I’m the guy who got rid of the search roll because I don’t like withholding information from players that I feel they’ve earned.
A central problem allows for the opposite approach. The referee can err on the side of giving the players too much information, because understanding a problem is no guarantee of being able to solve that problem.
In pondering the relative merits of mysteries and problems, my thoughts keep drifting to John’s old Necrocarserous campaign. Playing in that campaign was pivotally educational for me, and directly inspired way more of my blog posts than I’ve ever openly admitted. That campaign had a number of big, ‘central’ problems, but the one that stands out to me the most is the issue of Nepenthe.
Without digressing into a full explanation of the campaign world, I’ll just say that it’s a well known fact that every person in that world has had their memories stolen from them. These stolen memories are distilled into a liquid, called Nepenthe. Finding and reclaiming your own Nepenthe would be a huge boost to any character. We decided this was something we wanted to pursue.
There was some initial mystery in discovering where our Nepenthe was, but we actually solved that pretty quick. We knew what Nepenthe was, and that ours existed somewhere in the world, so we knew what questions to ask. The larger problem was getting to each of our Nepenthes (they weren’t all in the same place), and recovering them from whatever barriers might protect them.
We never accomplished that goal, but the struggle is something I remember fondly, and I’m sincerely proud of the clever solutions we employed along the way. In contrast, I don’t know that any of my players have ever really been aware of the mysteries going on around them in my campaigns. They’re fun for me, certainly, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having them. But I do think that failing to include some central problem has been a major failing of mine, and it’s something I’d like to remedy.
As an exercise, here are 12 potential central problems. Some of them include a bit of initial mystery. But, like Nepenthe, those mysteries can be presented frankly to the player, and solving them does not in itself overcome the problem.
A powerful government spy agency is constantly ferreting out everybody’s secrets. Even private conversations in your own home may lead to finding one of their dreaded blue envelopes in your pocket the next day. Public shaming and fines for improper thoughts are common.
The undermen–creatures of the deep earth–have reclaimed all metals and ores stolen from their lands by human invaders. Humanity has been forced to fall back on tools of wood and stone. The undermen occasionally burrow up for “surprise inspections.”
A titanic beast wanders the campaign world, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Its feet are the size of castles. Fighting it in any conventional sense is an absurd notion. Its body is crawling with otherworldly parasites that are themselves massive and dangerous beasts. The most noble and revered vocation is as the creature’s herald. Brave men and women ride ahead of the creature, evacuating settlements with as much advance warning as they can manage. The world has no great cities, no settlements older than a few decades.
An army of conquest is sweeping forward through the land. Wherever they go is changed, permanently. They impost strict laws, and harsh punishments. They gradually transform lighthearted D&D adventure land into a grueling, grimdark police state.
A virulent disease passes over the world in waves. Most who contract it are killed, and those who survive are mutated into horrible creatures which ought to be killed. The disease has rampaged for so long that no one now living can remember a time without it. The population of the human race has been dangerously reduced by its ravages. Any NPC the players encounter has a 1-in-6 chance to have contracted it if the players wish to go back and see them again.
At birth, every child’s soul is extracted by the Priests of the Only God. These souls are carefully stored and catalogued by the Divine Bureaucracy, held hostage to ensure everyone’s continued faith, and obedience to the traditional interpretations of the Only God’s Law. A select caste of nobility are allowed to retain their souls, which in turn makes those nobles stronger and more capable than their subject peoples.
Humanity is dominated by an alien force from another world. They use their advanced technology to keep humanity trapped in a perpetual middle age.
The world is wracked by endless conflicts between rival wizards. No community–however remote–lasts long before half their population is drafted into some wizard’s army, or rounded up to serve as test subjects for some vile experiment.
The sea god never wanted humans anywhere near her domain. She tolerated swimming, that wasn’t too bad. But she views the invention of ships as an insult. Humans are exploiting an unintended loophole in physics to trespass where they are not wanted, and so she has put a stop to it. As of 1 year ago, nothing is buoyant. Anything of the land placed upon the water sinks instantaneously, as if it were falling through thin air. This has completely cut off the player’s society from the rest of the world.
The rapid advance of technology has made many traditional jobs obsolete, forcing people into ever more menial and demeaning professions. They work longer hours, for less pay than their parents did, while a small group of oligarchs profit off the surplus value created by their labor.
A drunk god has granted human level intelligence to every creature with a brain. Domestic animals have revolted against their enslavement, game animals have united to form mutual protection pacts, parasites and large predators employ advanced tactics to feed on humans. Society is breaking down from every side, and it seems almost certain that humanity will become extinct within a generation.
The orphan nation needs a new roof.
In closing, I’d like to say that I am intensely proud my topbanner choice for this post. Like, you get it, right? Goddamn I am such a clever lil’ boi.
If you’ve read the rules document for Fuck the King of Space, you may have noticed that I’m doing some weird stuff with weapons that I didn’t fully explain. Mostly, this is because I haven’t finished sifting through the idea myself. I have a sense of what I want to do, but it’s going to take a lot of playing before I’ve boiled all my complicated instincts down to something fun and simple.
But for those who haven’t read the document, let’s back up for a bit. How do weapons in FKOS work?
First off, every weapon–whether it’s a wooden club or a death ray–deals 1d6 damage. No bonuses, no other die types, just a dirt simple rollin’ cube. It’s a move I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and I’m excited about it for a lot of reasons:
By making the range of possible damage predictable across every situation, I can plan hit point progression for each class much more precisely. I discussed this in a little more depth late last year.
The larger a damage die gets, the more frustrating low rolls are. If you’re rolling a d10 or a d12 for your damage, rolling a 1 feels like a huge bummer, particularly coming as it does after the joy of a successful attack. I think this is why some folks push towards rolling pools of dice. But if you’re just rolling a d6, then 1 is nearly 30% of your median roll.
I want weapon choice to be an interesting decision. Warrior characters should have little arsenals, with different weapons for different situations. If weapons have variable damage dice, then in most situations the weapon that deals the most damage is just going to be the objective best one to carry. I can’t even recall the last time I’ve seen a character use a 1d4 dagger.
The goal is to make weapons interestingly different from one another. Why pick a Plasma Rifle over a Lazrator? Or a Gladius over a Zwiehander?
Because each weapon has different quirks.
Quirks are something aside from basic roll-to-hit-then-roll-damage play that a given weapon is suited to. Whips are good for tangling foes, short swords are easy to use in cramped quarters, missile launchers can harm multiple foes with a single blast, etc.
At present, I’m dividing weapons into light, medium, and heavy categories. These have One, two, and three quirks respectively, and cost 50, 500, and 5,000 Darics.
It’s important to point out that a weapon’s explicitly called out quirks are not an exhaustive list of everything that weapon could be used for. If the player can explain how they’re using the weapon’s shape or function to accomplish a particular goal, we can work with that. Quirks are merely something a weapon is particularly well suited for.
So while daggers may receive a bonus to sneak attacks because of how easy to conceal they are, that doesn’t mean players can’t conceal or surprise with other weapons. Daggers are just the weapons best suited to that activity.
Hit Options
When an attack roll is successful, by default, characters have two options. They can either roll a d6 for damage, or they can make a called shot. (Explained on page 9 of the player’s guide.) Some weapons have quirks which add a third option.
Tangle: Roll a grapple against your target, using two fewer dice than normal. (minimum 1) If successful, the target is grappled, but you do not suffer the normal -6 penalty to your armor rating for being engaged in a grapple.
Hack: Outside of combat, the wielder inputs some code into the weapon. When it makes contact with a robot or a cyborg, the wielder can make a hacking check to enact that code.
Parry: When a successful attack is made against you, you may opt to sacrifice the ability to attack next turn to raise your armor rating by 2 this turn.
Delay: Target must make a saving throw versus Stun, or they will not be able to do anything other than move for 2 rounds.
Disarm: Target must make a saving throw versus Stun, or lose whatever they’re holding in one of their hands. (Attacker’s choice).
Sunder: Reduce the effectiveness of the target’s armor.
Trip: Target must make a saving throw versus Stun or fall prone.
Passive Bonuses
These are quirks which alter the normal use of the weapon: situational bonuses to attack rolls, extra effects when damage is dealt, etc.
Ship Strength: Able to damage space ships, which can normally only be hit by fixed weapon emplacements.
Close Quarters: Well suited to combat when there’s not much room to move. +2 to attack rolls when in a confined space, or in a melee with 5+ participants.
Riposte: When a successful attack is made against you,make a saving throw versus Stun. On success, you may make an immediate attack against whatever hit you.
Hold At Bay: Whenever a target attempts to close to melee range, you may make a free attack against them. (max 1 each round). If successful, deal damage, and the target fails to approach any closer than the weapon’s max range.
Push: In addition to damage, a successful hit will force most targets to move a few meters away from their attacker.
Piercing: Ignore some / all armor.
Area of Effect: Can attack all targets within an area, such as a line for beam-based weapons, or a sphere around the point of initial impact for explosive weapons.
Disintegration: If damage from this weapon kills a target, they leave no remains whatsoever.
Misc Abilities
The benefit of these quirks falls outside normal weapon use.
Status Symbol: +1 to your initial social action with anyone who appreciates the fine quality of your weapon.
Camouflaged: In most cases, you can get away with keeping this, even if you’ve been thoroughly searched and all your weapons taken from you.
Nasty Surprise: Small enough to hide, quick to move into lethal position. +1 to any attempt to surprise someone who is already aware of you.
