Libra, Sessions 4 & 5

Last time, the wizard freaks went to a party and really harshed the vibe. 

This week, things got worse. The grey-market eigenpharmaceuticals company Kanopy had entered into open war with the children of the Vampire's Head, but the PCs have decided to ignore this for now. Instead, they split up - Joe Normal heads to the local OSIRIS station, CATERPILLAR to try and persuade them to stay hands-off as the city explodes, while Toka and the Finance Optimizer take a break to go hunt down the necromancer. 

In the ruins of the necromancer's house they find his mentor, the talking skull [Charles? Camouflage? Correction? literally any word starting with C - the PCs have studiously ignored his name], who laughs about his idiot student - I don't need anyone stupid enough to burn their own house down as an apprentice... which means I have a position open, especially if you bring me a body... 

Joe Normal sees the body of the Vampire's Head get loaded into OSIRIS storage, picks up the coordinates of the City Bug nest, and hears about an "anomaly" that happens to line up exactly where the Templar first awoke, then heads out from CATERPILLAR to meet up with the others, who have found enough clues in the trashed house to pinpoint the necromancer's car (with a little help from Joe Normal's tap into the traffic cameras) and guess at his harebrained scheme to kill the U.S. president, the immortal Abraham Lincoln (don't worry about it). 

A short car chase later, the necromancer and his one (1) skeleton are obliterated. Problem solvlem. The PCs shrug, decide they have free time (still not worrying about the active shootouts between the vampires and Kanopy) and run off to poke around in Templar's birthplace(?), a 5-story apartment building. 

A 5-story apartment building with only 3 different people inside, copied and copied to fill the rooms, and with a staircase up to the sixth... floor... above the roof... and a door that opens to a round room of brightly-polished steel and strangely-proportioned, inhuman spacesuits. 

 The PCs wandered through round rooms, past cylinders scrolling with text in unknown language, past wall-sized touchscreens with targeting reticles over Philadelphia buildings, and into a cryobay where they found a sleeping creature, 10 feet of fur and teeth and wild, burning eyes - just like Templar. 

Eventually they oopsed and poked enough buttons to turn on the ship and awakened the space marine, then immediately stole his armor while he stumbled, cryosick and deeply confused, to the ship's bridge. PCs scattered across the ship - Joe Normal learning how to walk in stolen power armor, Toka throwing herself into the UFO's augmentation bay to get her skeleton reinstalled, Valrel winding up stuck in the singularity core, and the other two locked in the ship's bridge asking stupid questions to the space marine and the newly-awakened Grey bridge crew. 

louie zong

 

Around the time Toka slid out of the augmentation bay, newly Templar-ized, the PCs realized that being separated by irising steel doors and increasingly frustrated aliens was, maybe, a bad thing. So, Joe Normal gave Templar a phone call, crammed his phone next to the power armor's microphone, shut the visor, and had Templar lie fast in the peeping alien language while Joe collected the other PCs (with some help from the Finance Optimizer locking doors and shutting off lights, when necessary). Then, all collected in the space marine drop pod bay, and with the floor enticingly open, they decided to suplex one of the aliens off the ship with them and run.

Between interrogating their new free alien and looking through Toka's new 500 years of spacewar experience, they learned some stuff about the alien colonizing empire (that they mostly ignored after "alien colonizing empire") and decided they didn't like the sound of "alien colonizing empire" - so, they had the Finance Optimizer shut off the whole ship, including the containment for its core.

Oh. Oops. The core.

A black hole bloomed over Pennsylvania. 

Analysis

New change to the Infraspatial - the 10-foot radius of no fire or electricity was a huge inconvenience and a pain in the neck to remember, so it's now an active ability: "You can focus on an electrical device or a fire to shut it down as long as your focus is maintained. Firing pins hit primers and do nothing, computers crash instantly, cars stall. The same effect radiates from Lawful demons - a stilling of the world." 

This is mostly an improvement, though "if you can see the whole thing you can focus on the whole thing" was probably not the best precedent to set (see: the UFO exploding), but eeeeeehhhhhh, this isn't a game intensely focused on balance. 

Necromancy from the skull, space marine-ness from the UFO, and the full vampirism are all unlocked as 2-template prestige classes - I don't currently plan to post them, because while they aren't direct rips of pre-existing classes, they're extremely derivative (of Locheil's Necromancer, deus ex parabola's Cloudskater, and Gokun's Vampire, respectively). 

I think, between the open war, the microsingularity, the City Bugs, and the assassination plot, the campaign's about to pivot a bit. The local OSIRIS presence in Pennsylvania has been "Weights & Measures", an investigation-focused division with a reliance on "Haruspex" psychics. This isn't really working out for them (especially since the head Haruspex died in a друг-orchestrated freak car accident) - they'll soon be replaced by Orbital Mechanics, or Thermodynamics, or some other, blunter, option. Next session will probably begin with the City Bug nest being destroyed by airstrikes.

Libra, Session 3

A short one this week. Last time, the wizard freaks met an elderly wizard, wrecked his car, and made friends with Philadelphia's local cult of Apollo. 

This week, the cult sends them a letter - to celebrate the animation of their bronze idol to Apollo, they're inviting patrons and losers alike to a drug-filled feast on neutral ground, under the idol's eyes. The PCs weigh this against their other option, trudging around in damp graveyards after a novice necromancer, and decide the option with "light" and "people" and "alcohol" is preferable. 

At the party they met a couple more of the city's lesser factions:

• Kanopy Pharmaceuticals, a rapidly-expanding grey market parachemistry company, headed by "the Marquis", one of the billion petty lords of the sidhe. 
• and members of the private infraspatial club Commune Ataraxia, who eat gold. 

Among the Marquis' guards Valrel notices Islwyn, a runaway scion that the Vampire's Head hopes to capture and execute. She knows the Marquis is desperate for a peace treaty with the Head, so she lies - give me Islwyn, and the Head will sign whatever you want. 

Islwyn is sent out to die - it turned out he'd turned into a Troubled Antihero, pulled his fangs out, and tried to become a defender of the weak and powerless. He only gets as far as "Wait, you don't ha-" before the PCs blow his leg smoove off with a .50 cal and drag him off to get thrown into the maw of the Head. Valrel is allowed to sip from the hideous omnidirectional spray of blood and will soon morph into a full vampire - the other scions politely applaud, and nobody pays attention to Toka scooping up Islwyn's garage-built UV-lightsaber vampire-killing spear.

On the way back they are mildly annoyed by a token force of "city bugs", man-sized parasitic wasps farmed (for some godforsaken reason) by the Apollo cult's main rival. This poses no threat to anybody, but the city bug herders didn't want anyone to forget about how much they hate everyone. 

Back in the party, Joe Normal tries a Kanopy-original entheogen and awakens in Ynn. As he wanders through the Garden, he realizes he can no longer feel the strings of the Pyramid in the back of his head. When he reawakens, he begs the Marquis for more - and the sidhe nods. Of course, for a price. 

Analysis

This is more like it - a self-operating game. I did no prep until about an hour before the game, when I rolled twice on the Big Spreadsheet and learned that Commune Ataraxia and the City Bug Herders were acting this week. Since they're both related to the House of Musagetes, who just got the zôn last session, it was clear the House would be celebrating, and the city bugs would start swinging. (The Commune Ataraxia job was an interception of Kanopy's entheogen couriers that the PCs flatly ignored.)

Though that's the bare minimum, and even if the game's self-sustaining it'll need some work to shine. Basic bestiaries and expanded plans for the 5 minor factions (especially the City Bug Herders, who need the most work - for instance, a name. And an explanation for why they want to own man-sized parasitic wasps), actually finishing the patron jobs, etc. It's in a really "building the rails in front of the train" place right now, and it's a bit tiring.

Oh - and it turns out that however-many years of online roleplaying have left me with absolutely no capability to act out personalities. Almost all of my NPCs talk in the same way and make the same jokes, but I don't really care - the important part is that they want different things. 

Next week everything will get... harsh, as the negotiations between Kanopy and the Vampire's Head evaporate. 

Troupe Play & Character Progression - Navigator Domain Procedures Part 3

This is both the least useful and most potentially divisive of my Navigator mechanic posts (intro, domain economy, island generator, troupe play, full document) - I am fully "recreating Runequest by accident" here. The goal is to specialize PCs enough that choice of player character is relevant, and to support troupe play as the Navigator septs elect new leaders.

1 - Progression via XP

At the end of a turn, this season's Select gain Experience Points equal to the amount of Glory collected by their sept this turn. This counts penalties to Glory (a sept who collected a vital resource at the cost of two deaths gains 5-2-2=1 Glory, and thus the Select gains 1 XP) but unlike Glory XP cannot be lost.

XP can then be spent on benefits for the Select who earned it: 

Skill Improvement

New characters begin with one skill from their Background, then [1+WIS bonus] (min. 1) skills of the players' choice. Skills provide a +4 bonus to relevant checks, and also increase the scope of tasks you can complete with no check. 

A new skill costs 15 XP.  

Combat Skills

"Melee Combat" and "Ranged Combat" are skills a player can choose to improve, providing a +1 to-hit with their associated attacks. 

Individual weapon proficiencies ("Navigator throwing darts", etc) can also be bought, providing +1 to-hit with that weapon and unlocking its weird bonus (cleaves, disarms, free throws, whatever). 

Both of the above can be bought twice per entry, and stack (so you may have Ranged Combat 2 and Darts 1, for a +3 to-hit).  

Sidebar - Standard Navigator Weapons

Throwing Darts - light (1d6), must be thrown - proficiency: after rolling initiative, you may choose to go on Init 0 to treat your initiative roll as an immediate thrown attack roll with a dart (stolen from a Discord post by Grackle Court).

Painted Dueling Knife - light (1d6) - proficiency: you may sacrifice 3 damage on a successful hit to disable a human target's limb for a round with stinging pigment.

Boarding Axe - medium (1d8) - proficiency: gain an extra attack if you just entered melee range with your target.

Spear - medium (1d8) - proficiency: anyone approaching you with a shorter weapon is immediately attacked.

Air Rifle - heavy (1d10), +2 to-hit - proficiency: a maneuver spent aiming grants advantage to-hit and to damage.

Greataxe - massive (2d6) - proficiency: damage dice explode. 

HP   

PCs begin with [6+CON bonus] HP. You can spend 15 XP to purchase another 2, up to a maximum of +6. 

2 - Progression via Background 

Later, in part 3.5 because it will be very long and take forever and I was supposed to post this a month and a half ago, an updated list of Navigator backgrounds will come with a single delta template to earn that enhances your background's effect. Some of these are easy (Gunsmith Aspirant, Espatier), some of them will be a bit more troublesome. 

3 - Becoming Imperious 

At the beginning of Black Season, list three of your upcoming accomplishments - I will put a town of the Spire to the torch, I will bring down a towering machine, I will clear an isle of Machine Space, et cetera. Your assembly will add conditions to these - do it without casualties, do it alone, do it unarmed, and so on.

Complete all three and in the next Blue you will be eligible for election - a simple plurality of septs. In case of tie, the last Imperious chooses.

When you become Imperious, a new Select is chosen for your sept. Play both of them for the Blue Season. 

The Imperious PC is expected to live inside their Assembly-Ship, surrounded by finery and courtiers (caught by their authority like a fly in a spider’s web). They are provided the use of a beautifully-decorated ultralight in order to reach sept-vessels.

They have six Lictors - capable combatants (+2 to-hit, heavy weapons) sent from your Assembly to act as bodyguards and police force. They are always available.

Each turn, the Imperious may make a single Decree:

Prepare the Engine Array - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. Surplus fuel gives each sept of your Assembly gains one slot of a trade good, Pressurized Hydrogen (which can also be expended to run away, pour cryogenic liquid on something, or whatever else you'll do with a tank of liquid hydrogen).

Prepare the Sensor Antennae - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. A new route is revealed to the septs of your Assembly. Describe one feature of the island, as the antennae sweep over it.

Prepare the Ecosystem - 5 points are added to the tally of your Assembly-Ship. All septs of your assembly gain 3 Surplus.

Self-Aggrandize - floating 0g wine-spheres, lapis lazuli furniture, big murals with your face on them, the whole nine yards. Gain 3 Glory for your sept - other septs may spend Surplus to give you 1 Glory for each 2 Surplus spent. The Select may also arrive at your council to speak to each other and so you can harangue them face-to-face.

Declare Judgment - arrive at a sept and lay down the law. Your lictors are empowered to perform executions, mutilations, exiles, and other tortures as long as you are personally present.

Entrap Advisor - summon and host an NPC of your choice. They are not permitted to refuse.

4 - Diagetic Improvement 

Look, I'm not leaving all these electromagnets and volatile chemicals lying around for no reason. You want a higher attack bonus? Homemade railgun.

Maybe there'll be places and things that let you spend XP for new weird feats. That sounds like something I'd write down and then forget to ever put in. 

like this, from Rise Up Comus's Middle-Earth hexcrawl.

5 - PC Rotation  

Wounded characters take turns off to be cared for, during which you play another PC. Sure, this is a reason to have a second one lying around, but it's not really much of one. 

So, I'm considering one of these:

1. Characters must take a season off in order to spend their experience. 

2. When you choose a returning character as Select you lose Glory equal to 1/4th their total experience. Repeat Select are seen as harmful. It is expected for you to do well and get out of the way so someone else can soak in the benefits - taking up the mantle again goes against Navigator leveling mechanisms, and raises both fear ("perhaps they are sliding into tyranny") and pity ("is their sept so bereft that no one else could be found to acclaim?") in your neighbors. This one is true to the setting, but it's also the most blatant use of the rules to make the players play the game a certain way, and I assume there's a theoryposter ready to kick down my door if I use it.

So. I will use... one of them. The 2rd is the most interesting to me, as you can tell from it being 7 times as long as the other, but I can see plenty of reasonable players going "it costs me a FINE? to play MY CHARACTER?" and hitting me with stones.

Postscript

Someone, I think Prismatic Wasteland (on an old newsletter?), would end posts with links to posts on other blogs, for that good ol' cooperation and collaboration thing. I saw this, went "wow, I should do that", and then never remembered to.

This time I finally have because of ALLUVIUM, a Lanthanide Horizon mini-hexcrawl by friend of the blog Primeumaton (whose hexes are always a delight). Maybe I'll remember to again. Or I won't.