April 8, 2022 by juddthelibrarian

Sometimes the rockets launch and sometimes they don’t.

In which the game ends before the adventure is finished…?

WTF?

https://lonearchivist.itch.io/alien-gods

We all like Mothership, each other’s contributions and were digging the adventure but due to personal issues all around, we had nearly a month between games. This adventure is intense; it is a thinker or as Judd called it, “a cerebral xeno-temple crawl.”

It was just too long between games. Momentum was lost; it happens the best of us and yet no one seems to blog about it. Well, here we are. The three gamers had a candid discussion and agreed to walk away.

We’ll be back to Mothership before too long and you’ll see ME, Mother Eff, your favorite ghost-astronaut mascot to walk you through it.

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https://githyankidiaspora.com/mothership-horror-sci-fi/

Blog of Judd Karlman from Daydreaming about Dragons

March 11, 2022 by juddthelibrarian

Mothership, What We Give to Alien Gods, S3: Pushing Buttons

In this third session the scientist player-characters entered the Cyclopean Alien Temple through a breached wall. They tested out the Panic Table and pushed some buttons. Judd was going to name this session, Cyclopean Alien Temple but Pushing Buttons felt more clever.

Spoilers-are-a-comin’!

It has been three weeks since this group last played, so they settled into things. Dr. Navaro, played by MadJay!, did some research, trying to make sense of this pillar orbiting a cube the size of a moon.

That roll failed and so Judd moved things to the Sanity or Fear roll the adventure demands for dealing with the scope and size of this thing. Navaro failed that too and took some stress.

Scans showed 3 possible entry-ways into the temple – 2 of which were breaches in the walls. Dr. Anders, upon spacewalking to the breach they chose for their entryway, failed his Sanity check too and took his Stress up to 5.

Shit was real when they finally rolled on the Panic table upon seeing 3 alien corpses floating in this control room. Navaro got a sense of DOOM, all critical successes are failures. Anders came away with a new phobia, latching on to the fact that the Triathals (what the aliens are called) were headless. The good doctor now has a fear of losing his head.

That Panic table is no fucking joke. You can lose your character in a single roll.

After that it was time to play with some alien glyphs and the room’s control panel, covered in alien glyphs and nerd out about theories about alien brains – both in and out of game. The breach they entered through was a claustrophobically close fit.

Drones wouldn’t work because the stone/metal the temple was made of ate the signal that allowed them to control it.

A few interesting things happened as they pushed buttons on the control panel.

First of all there was this moment of brevity, where the two scientists joked about pushing the 3 depressed glyphs at the same time. Navaro made a joke about, “Clearly, we’ll push the buttons on 3.”

Judd decided that this moment of levity took away a stress point. “For a moment, you two are interacting like you did back at the lab and you can almost forget that you are in an alien control room open to the vacuum of space in an alien temple.

The glyphs on the panel went from this:

To this:

That didn’t mean shit to them because the glyphs don’t have context yet. When their trusty android colleague, Mendel, reported that the pillar they were in was seeming to drift away from the cube and other pillars in formation, they quickly depressed the original glyphs again.

Going over the room carefully, they found a trapezoidal piece of metal with an alien glyph on it, crossed out.

Jim, who plays Dr. Anders, asked if he could make a Linguistics roll to make some sense of this shit or get a clue. Judd was down with it, knowing that it is a fine line. Part of the fun of this adventure is figuring this shit out but can you figure it out with the information at hand?

The roll was a success but not critical. Judd offered the following: The crossed out glyph means, God. The control pane is numbers and the other glyphs from the column are simple words and concepts.

Anders isn’t sure how or why he knows that; he is attributing it to the dreams that brought him here.

Anders was explaining this and the game was already a half-hour over time. Judd dropped a final detail on them before the game ended, as their mentor and professor, Dr. Grahm walked into the room through a trapezoidal glowing blue doorway. He had a strange key in one hand and a cheap pistol jury-rigged for vacuum firing.

“I am seeing a vision of my students from my lab back at the university. There must be a psionic angler nearby. I’ll shoot it and get to work.”

Pushing Buttons, indeed!

TO BE CONTINUED next week…

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Mother Eff out!

Blog of Judd Karlman from Daydreaming about Dragons

February 12, 2022 by juddthelibrarian

Mothership, What We Give to Alien Gods, S1: So, Two Scientists and an Android walk into a nebula.

What We Give to Alien Gods / An Adventure for Mothership / Session One / So, Two Scientists and an Android Walk into a Nebula

In which gaming friends from different corners of my life meet, we make characters and play for a bit. – getting the characters’ emotional cards on the table.

There should be no spoilers but if you want to play this adventure without any knowledge at all, details might slip.

Got a pair of friends who had a particular time-slot in their lives open to play some Mothership, knowing that they’d both be down with it and hoping that friends from different parts of my life would get along. So far so good. We’ve got a pair of scientists; the character sheet gave some guidance. We’re playing, What We Give to Alien Gods; I find running published adventures pretty challenging but I think the pamphlet-size will help and I’m glad I have another week to get some visuals together to share on our Jamboard moving forward.

Dr. Wren Navarroe, played by Jay (MadJay Zero Hustle and Play Fearless) and Dr. Nathan Anders, played by an old friend, Jim, were students under Dr. Grahm, who went into Galaer XII, the Amaranthine Nebula, to look at something known only as Project Cyclopean Temple. During chargen, Jim had mentioned that Nathan was jealous of Wren and the way Dr. Grahm favored them. Post-doc students with an unhealthy relationship to their professor? Yeah, after a few decades living in a university town, that scans. Jay described Wren as being inspired by Fox Mulder and I think we’re still figuring out what precisely that means at the table. I can’t wait to learn more. I hear the Truth is Out There.

We chatted a bunch during character creation and I used every bit of it I could. Good stuff. Jay had Dr. Navarroe get them through security measures around Project Cyclopean Temple when he realized Dr. Grahm had left his favorite student a back-door into the files when he used his sign-in. Everyone at the table is a GM, so we’re all listening to one another and using each other’s creative contributions. Love it.

Dr. Anders specializes in Sophontology and Dr. Navaroe specializes in Xenoesotericism. The character sheets really were a map, Daniel. We decided that they had been hired to take a science boat out to look at a dark matter anomaly but changed course to go find their lost professor. The Bradfield Company had also supplied Mendel, an Android with some piloting skills when they are plugged into the ship’s computer and the ability to support the science team with their own training in Exobiology.

Naming things is so important in these first games and one of the things I really like about Mothership is it offers a vibe but no history, no background, just, a kind of…eh, it is a bit like Alien but not really kinda thing. The world-building is left to us and I dig that. At one point Jim talked about a trail of alien artifacts that could be offering evidence that we are getting closer to an alien homeworld and I yes but-ed it, “That sounds like a great hypothesis for a future science paper.” We’ll see if it ends up being true.

Are either of the characters veterans? What was the war about? What school did they attend? We’ll find out. I’m daydreaming details but there’s no rush.

https://jamboard.google.com/d/18i5KI-1o1Lm8v8y5NZQJpOFprKuZQhIEb7g86J7csvA/edit?usp=sharing

The ship was called the Humboldt, found when someone (was it Jay or Jim?) suggested that Bradley Company ships were named after fish species. Grahm’s ship is called the Balinadae. I named Mendel after searching up names of biologists and liking how the name Mendel sounded. Awkward androids are some of my favorite PC and NPC’s to play.

In contrast to Mendel, the ship’s computer is warm and very human-sounding. Jim and Jay both spent time in New Jersey, something we all have in common, so I described the computer’s voice like your favorite NJ diner waitress, who smokes a pack of Marlboro Lights a day and always remembers how you like your coffee. “What’ll it be, hon?” Jim named her, Celeste.

After making characters we had enough time to wake up out of hyperdrive sleep and get to know one another a bit. Anders took some stress when an Electromagnetic Wave rattled the ship a bit but Mendel and Navaroe handled it.

Jim made some fun decisions that were worth highlighting. He had Anders trust Mendel with the fact that they had changed the ship’s course and go save their former professor. This led to Mendel trying to trust Anders with his hobby, that I presented in as creepy a way as I could, causing Anders to run when Mendel was trying to show his new comrade the whiskey still he had hidden in the engine room, “There are no cameras there, so I can engage in my hobby without observation.” Jim really played it up for maximum horror and made it a real Jonesy Moment.

Horror, in my experience, isn’t so much about one person setting a tone but about everyone buying in. Sitting at computers in broad daylight, Jim and Jay are buying in.

Mendel trying to share his hobby led to a minor freak-out from Anders and some well meant apologies. Anders let Navaroe know that he was flat out jealous of his relationship with Professor Grahm. I love that we are starting the game with that on the table, right from the start as we head to Dr. Grahm’s abandoned spaceship. Some folks would’ve let that jealousy ferment in secret but it is out there now and I dig it. That is where we’re starting next game.

Dice hit the table, we saw some stress doled out and we’ve got some context. I’d like to get more of a feel for the ship’s layout and look, get to know Navaroe a bit more and see what happens when these scientists engage with alien horror. It was a fine start.

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Blog of Judd Karlman from Daydreaming about Dragons

October 9, 2021 by juddthelibrarian

Leomund’s Tiny Hut in Barovia

In my head-canon, Leomund is a brilliant apprentice to Mordenkainen, saw his magnificent mansion spell and said, “What if we scaled it down and gave young, up-and-coming adventurers the safety they need?” and Leomund’s Tiny Hut was born.

The description of the spell:

A 10-foot-radius immobile dome of force springs into existence around and above you and remains stationary for the duration. The spell ends if you leave its area.
Nine creatures of Medium size or smaller can fit inside the dome with you. The spell fails if its area includes a larger creature or more than nine creatures. Creatures and objects within the dome when you cast this spell can move through it freely. All other creatures and objects are barred from passing through it. Spells and other magical effects can’t extend through the dome or be cast through it. The atmosphere inside the space is comfortable and dry, regardless of the weather outside.
Until the spell ends, you can command the interior to become dimly lit or dark. The dome is opaque from the outside, of any color you choose, but it is transparent from the inside.
PHB, page 255

The Thursday night crew needed a rest after a dramatic entrance into Ravenloft from a portal in Sigil. Bugwump magicked up the tiny hut. There was a thread in the DM’s of Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft FB group about it.

First a group of wolves came and sniffed around the edges of the spell’s bubble. Of course the packs of wolves in Barovia are commanded by Strahd. The First Vampire has to be curious about these newcomers but even with curiosity is some boredom. He’s seen this shit before. Strahd has lost count of the number of scrappy adventurers. He’s an accomplished wizard; he knows what this spell is. Shit, he’s probably met Leomund.

More about this session here if you’d like to see the full write-up.

Kuru, the Halfling Rogue on watch woke everyone up to let them know about the wolves but then the wolves left. They returned with a villager, who the largest wolf pinned to the ground by his throat. The villager began reciting, “Strahd is the Land and the Land is Strahd!” over and over. Strahd was curious as to what they’d do. The characters jumped out of their bubble of safety and saved the villager. It was a fun fight.

Strahd got the measure of the heroes. He saw the fighter’s vorpal sword in action. He saw how they worked as a team and got the measure of their morality. They will leave safety to save a villager…somewhere Strahd smiles a feral grin.

Strahd is circling the party like a shark. What is the scariest part of a shark movie? Let the players sit in their tiny hut. Yes, it infuriates Strahd that there is a bubble on his land that he can’t Scry. Yes, they are safe but the hut doesn’t last forever. Having that kind of safety for a little while is good for horror.

Ask the players questions about their characters while they sit and wait.

Was there a time when your character felt trapped?

What was a safe place the character can remember?

Tell me about a time when your character’s home was broken into and what happened. Was anything stolen? How did it make the character feel?

Send the players an email before the game asking them to daydream about a short campfire story about what their character’s homeland says about vampires. It isn’t the DM’s job to single-handedly set a scary tone without any help from anyone else; tone (especially horror) has to be done together as a table.

Sit in Leomund’s finite bubble. Compare scars. Tell stories. Moments of safety with doom all around is great horror content.

Strahd is patient. He’ll be waiting in the Mists.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/366372/Ulmist-Inquisitors-13-accursed-pages-about-the-psionic-monster-hunters–From-Van-Richtens-Guide-to-Ravenloft

April 3, 2020 by juddthelibrarian

Travel in Trophy Gold Redux and Pretty

We played our third session of Trophy Gold last night and it is really fun. I thought I’d hate the tokens handed out in Hunt rolls but I’m enjoying the heck out of them. If a player doesn’t like that kind of meta-mechanic they can just use it as Gold but it is a fantastic way to get things moving when someone explores the environment in any meaningful way.

From, “I peak in the tomb to I look behind the tapestry to see if there’s a secret door” to “I look in the tomb to see if there’s any treasure,” I’ve seen Hunt rolls make both of those endeavors more interesting than they otherwise would’ve been.

Looking back on my earlier blog post on travel I can see places where my wording was awkward, especially after playing a few sessions and seeing these mechanics hit the table. Below is a poster I made with the travel rules, which are still slightly tweaked Hunt rolls but I think I have tightened up the wording. I wrote the previous blog post almost 24 days ago, which in 2020 time is about 73 years.

I changed safety from beasts to some protection from beasts because monsters don’t care about your damned walls. Still, some protection is better than none and every advantage you can muster when you are picking up steel against a beast is important.

More house-rules will no doubt emerge. When winter cloaks the land in ice and death and treasure-hunters bundle up in their chapter houses, does one take a dark die when one travels?

Add a dark-colored die if you are willing to risk your mind or body in order to get to where you are going. You must include this die whenever you travel during winter’s reign of ice and death, when days are short, the ground is frozen and the veil between our world and the Quietlands is so perilously thin that some folk slip through the Bone Gate while sleeping in their own warm beds.

Travel Poster

I’ve been futzing with the layout tools in Canva.com and making book covers for campaigns I’m playing in. I am really not good at graphic design and layout but learning a new thing is fun. I’ll start taking lessons on Lynda.com for Affinity Publisher soon.

General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “Van (Arménie).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1867 – 1870. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-7060-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

https://shopofjudd.threadless.com/collections/geek-media-studies

Find this design and more in the Geek Media Studies collection…

March 3, 2020 by juddthelibrarian

Death in Trophy Gold

If a character reached 6 Ruin because of physical limitations of mortal flesh, an incarnation of Death will come to take their soul to the Quietlands beyond the Bone Gates.

Quietlands Guide, Lesser

Description: Quietlands guides often change their look based on the culture of the deceased. Sometimes they are a ghoul riding a rotting polar bear, an angel with a thousand eyes and 8 wings or even an old fashioned skeleton in black robes and a scythe.

Endurance: 6

Habits:

Cleave a soul with a magical weapon.
Cut a magical tether that no mortal weapon can touch.
Cut a deal for more time as long as it means more souls for the Guide.
Raise the recent dead to cover their retreat into the Quietlands with the soul.
Offer the soul one last good-bye to someone important from their life.
Tell mortals a detail about their eventual deaths.

Defenses: No mortal weapon can harm them.

Weakness: Summoning circles can entrap them if you can trick them into it.

Holy relics have strong effects on them.

What if the characters drive away death?

The Quietlands will come for them. It is only a matter of time.

The dead character’s Ruin is still 6. Their souls are in their bodies and they can move around but the clock is ticking. If they are called upon to make any Ruin rolls they either fall to dust, their soul evaporating into the universe like water into a stormcloud or they will become a vicious undead monster, losing control of their character as they become a NPC.

If the character can find the right lore, they can fashion themselves into a sentient undead character, setting their Ruin to 1. How do they do this?

Lich-Rites

Maybe they perform the Lich-Rites. Now their Ruin is bound up in their ability to devour spells. When they need to lower their Ruin, the only way is to devour spells. Each spell they remove from a living or dead skull or ripping them off the written page. These spells are stored in their decaying bones, able to be cast by them for a price. When they cast them, their Ruin will increase.

If they reach 6 Ruin again their bodies will turn to dust and only a jeweled skull will remain as they turn into a villainous Demi-Lich, bringing horror to some tomb.

Other Rites

Blood Rites, Ghoul Rites, and many others haunt the shelves of dusty libraries across the loom of the world and new rites are born every so often.

Sometimes a character hell-bent on vengeance will not attach to any rites, turning into a spite-filled Revenant, turning to the Quietlands after bloody justice is wrought.

Quietlands Storm

Description: A stormcloud in the shape of a roaring skull.

Endurance: 9

Habits:

Ghosts slip into the living world to offer dire warnings.
Rain cold hell down on the countryside
Lightning strikes anything built by the dead character since they perished.
Wind rips the soul from the character’s rotting shell
The dead rise to bring the lost soul into the Quietlands
Cause spells to act in odd and unexpected ways

Defenses: No mortal weapon can harm them.

Weakness: Powerful holy sites can slow the storm down for a time.

There is a black diamond in the eye of the storm. Plucking it from the skull will cause the storm to abate but the storm will attempt to possess any who hold the diamond.

The Quiet One

If the Quietlands Storm is somehow defeated, the Quiet One will venture forth before the year is over. You’ll know when it happens. Words will cease to be heard, holy statues will cry blood, temple and church roofs will fall on the heads of the faithful and a generation of children will be born as hungry ghouls.

How do Undead Exist if the Quiet One is coming?

I’m glad you asked.

In the Quietlands everyone’s tomb is waiting, prepared and silent. Yours is there. In order to stop death from seeking a lost soul, you must venture into the Quietlands, find your tomb and leave a living soul in its depths. There are few guides qualified to lead adventurers to their own tomb and fewer maps but for every lich-queen or vampire lord is someone who knows how to get this fell task done.

These designs and more in my Threadless shop, all artists’ proceeds go to amazing organizations and charities:

February 20, 2020 by juddthelibrarian

Trophy Gold: Debt holders

Debt is a tangible mechanical part of Trophy Gold. I thought it’d be worthwhile to have options for the table when someone comes to collect.

Who is holding the debt?

1. Bulla Shrines

Said to have invented credit, debt and banking, the demi-god, Bulla is a faceless deity whose accountant-priests are known to have necromantic powers. Some say they use these powers to demand a spirit continue paying for the living’s debt, even after death.

Some whisper that Bulla’s displeasure with its government was one of the many forces bringing about the the Fall of Olde Kalduhr.

If you fall behind on payments, revenant-collectors will be sent to bring you to the nearest shrine.

2. Some Ducal Asshole

Some dukes and duchesses love being patrons to adventurers, hearing their daring stories and taking the pick of their treasures.

If you fall behind on your payments the duchy’s thug-knights and their retinue will most likely be the ones dragging you back to the ducal seat but sometimes a noble will get off their throne and pursue an adventurer themselves, often with highly paid bounty hunters in their company.

3. The Dark and Gold Guild

Some adventures live to see their dreams realized. Those in the Dark and Gold Guild are adventurers who earned a fortune and used that fortune to capitalize on others’ desire to delve and raid tombs.

Not wanting to ever don armor again, if you fall behind in your payments it will likely be adventurers coming after you, becoming more and more seasoned as the debt grows.

4. Starless Matron

The dark and deep parts of the world, where the starless elves build glittering cities and the cave-bear-folk tend to their shroombeast herds are the Starless Matrons, powerful fae matriarchs who pay homage to the All-Mother, (may her holy webs and eight legs be blessed).

If you fall behind in your payments, Starless Elf Freeriders, riding giant spiders or lizard-raptors will begin trying to collect your bounty. If that fails, they will turn to the altars of their spider-pantheon and begin summoning.

5. Death

Surely you were not so foolish as to put a lien on your own living soul for some trifling gear to go delving. Surely not.

If you were to fall behind on your payments, Death would begin collecting from those all around you until you found a shrine and paid that debt in full and then some.

6. Farmer Cooperative

They had a good harvest last year and wanted to invest in a hero so that their children could know wealth and live the dream. They pooled their money and put their trust in you and your daring, equipping you for a series of delves.

If you were to fall behind on your payments, the farmers would send their best trackers and veterans of war after you to reclaim payment or bring you back to the village for a trial.

The Trophy Kickstarter is in its last days, within bow’s shot of its last stretch goal in which myself and an amazing group of table-top role-playing game designers will get to design incursions that will be a mega-dungeon. Please check it out.